The Dominici Affair

by Martin Kitchen

  The weapon, an American M1 carbine with the serial number 1.702.864, was produced by the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation. It was a semiautomatic weapon with a fifteen-round magazine. The caliber was .30 (7.62 mm). More than six million M1s were produced by ten different companies, including General Motors and Winchester. This particular weapon had a metal plate with the initials RMC, which caused all manner of confusion. It was suggested that they might stand for Régiment de Marche Coloniale, but this particular unit had long since been disbanded. On 19 August Aimé Dominici wrote to his brother Gustave and suggested that they were the initials of René-Marcel Castaing, a neighbor in Lurs who had died in 1946. Aimé said that on the day of Castaing’s burial, his neighbor Paul Maillet had taken all his guns and later took over the Castaing farm. On receipt of this letter, Gustave Dominici jumped onto his motorbike and took it to Sébeille, who was singularly unimpressed. He had already concluded that RMC stood for the name of David Cullen Rockola’s company, the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation or the Rock-Ola Music Corporation, which also made the famous Rock-Ola jukeboxes. In fact, lengthy investigations by Interpol established that the weapon had once been the property of the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario.5

  Aimé’s letter seemed to be confirmed by an anonymous letter claiming that Maillet had stolen Castaing’s American weapon on the day of the funeral. The gendarmes quickly discovered the woman who had written the letter. She claimed that in 1950 she had seen the rifle hanging on Maillet’s kitchen wall, but it was without the magazine. Maillet, a railway man who lived with his wife and five children at a smallholding known as La Maréchale, at first seemed like a prime suspect. He had been active in the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans Français, rising to head a group in Mirabeau in the Vaucluse. He was also known as an expert poacher, as well as a sturdy hiker, so the gendarmes assumed that he could very well have been on the prowl for wild boar the night of the murders. Further, he had a quick temper and was of a nervous disposition.

  On 29 August the gendarmes made a surprise visit to Paul Maillet’s smallholding in an attempt to uncover the ownership of the presumed murder weapon. His wife, Ginette, and their older son, age ten, claimed never to have seen the gun, but their two younger children, ages nine and six, were not quite so sure. Young Paul, aged two, and the baby were not questioned. Having searched the house, they discovered that Maillet was stealing electricity from the main and that his bicycles had no license plates. They also found a couple of Sten guns with ample supplies of ammunition.6 Sébeille and the public prosecutor in Digne, Louis Sabatier, agreed that they would not press charges on any of these offenses in the hope that they could use Maillet to break through the Dominicis’ defenses. Meanwhile, all they got out of him was that in the afternoon of 4 August, while he was working on the railway line, he had heard a rifle shot.7 Further investigation revealed that it had been fired by Aimé Perrin, Germaine Dominici Perrin’s brother-in-law, who lived at Giropey. He had tried to scare away some crows. The gendarmes were surprised that he had used a rifle, a Springfield that he should have handed over in 1945, against magpies. He explained that he had chosen it because of the noise it made. The gendarmes took the illegal weapon and let the matter drop.

  The area was bristling with army weapons collected in summer of 1944 as the Allies swept through the area. After the war it was strictly forbidden to own such weapons, particularly automatics like the Sten or semiautomatics such as the M1. Few were willing to hand them over, though, and the authorities did not ask too many awkward questions.

  Paul Maillet, along with his wife, his father, and his mother, was interrogated at length at the town hall in Forcalquier. Their testimonies established his complete innocence. Maillet, mindful that the police had a hold over him for the possession of illegal weapons and stealing electricity, promised Sébeille that he would do everything he could to help him in his investigation.

  The weapon that Sébeille’s assistants found was in an appalling state of repair, which explains why the stock had become detached from the barrel. It had been held together with bicycle brake cable and a Duralumin band. The piece of wood found near Elizabeth’s body fit perfectly to the stock, clearly indicating that it was the weapon that had been used to kill her. That the carbine had been patched up in such an amateur fashion showed that it came from the neighborhood. Further evidence that it was owned locally was that the Duralumin strip was similar to ones frequently used to attach the obligatory plates to mopeds and bicycles that showed the owner’s name. Extensive investigations revealed that this metal band had been sold in Lurs by Joseph Chauve, a tinker based at 16 Impasse de la Cité in Marseille. He could not remember to whom he had sold it so many years ago.

  Regardless of ownership, the rifle was definitely not a weapon that a professional killer or hired assassin would have chosen. It remained to be seen whether it was capable of being fired and, if so, whether it had been used in the other two murders. Before any such investigation was even undertaken, Sébeille told the press that evening that “the weapon will talk” and would do so loud and clear. He maintained this rifle was a local weapon. The murderer had acted on his own and came from the vicinity of the Dominici farm. He had shot the two adults and, having run out of bullets, had clubbed Elizabeth to death with the butt. The commissioner, having leaped to a series of all too hasty conclusions, seemed to have imagined that the case would soon be solved. It was not long before he began to regret this display of self-confidence as the investigation dragged on for month after frustrating month, and the pressure weighed heavily on him to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. The police investigation, which began on 5 August 1952, lasted until 16 November the following year.

  In possession of this “talking” weapon, Sébeille implied that an arrest would be made within a matter of hours. Captain Albert from Forcalquier, who unlike the commissioner was fully conversant with the peasant mind and milieu, was less sanguine. Shrugging his shoulders, he said they would “need a couple of hours, or perhaps a couple of years.” His wry skepticism was fully justified. Sébeille would soon come up against not only the stubborn resistance in which peasant suspicions of the outsider were combined with an unwillingness to get involved in any way with this unpleasant affair but also the initial determination of the Communist Party to protect the Dominicis from the police.

  At about 7:30 p.m., as Sébeille was going to leave the Grand’ Terre, Gaston Dominici approached him. Pointing to a mulberry tree, he said that Lady Drummond had fallen there, adding that he was certain that she had not suffered. This was a very odd remark, because he knew full well that Anne had died close to the Hillman, or about 10 yards from the mulberry. In saying that she had not suffered any pain, he was merely repeating what Dr. Dragon had openly said. A day or two later he would say that the little girl started screaming as she ran away from the mulberry tree and attempted to escape.8 Gaston also told Commander Bernier in front of a witness that “when someone shot at the little girl—” but was then interrupted by some hasty question. It is not at all clear what game Gaston was playing here. Was he attempting some cunning ruse, or was this an exercise of his customary self-importance? No one bothered to question him further.

  Just before calling it a day the gendarmes discovered a foreign legionnaire’s uniform in a thicket near Aiglun, some 18 miles away, giving rise to speculation that the murderer was a deserter. An identity card in the name of Cesarino Donati led to the apprehension of a man with a cast-iron alibi. All told, a few pieces of evidence had been collected, including what appeared at first sight to be the murder weapon; the victims’ bodies had been taken to Forcalquier; and the Hillman was stored in a garage in Peyruis. (It was left unsealed and later moved to Digne, where it was left in care of the clerk of the court’s wife. Long before the trial took place, it was sent back to England, where it was auctioned off by Sir Jack’s heirs. In a ghoulish coda it was bought by a circus proprietor, who exhibited it in Blackpool, complete with crudely fashioned wax f
igures of the Drummond family.) Still nothing had been done to cordon off the murder site, and it seemed that the perfunctory search for material evidence had come to an end. Sébeille concluded this first day of his investigation by announcing that the crime site had nothing more to tell.

  Although Sébeille talked frequently to the press, the story that emerged was often wildly speculative. Combat reported that Sir Jack and his wife had been machine-gunned (apparently with a Winchester), that Elizabeth (said to be aged twelve) had been brutally clubbed to death, and that another young woman had managed to escape and was wandering about the countryside in a state of shock. The murderer was a deserter from the Foreign Legion who had killed the Drummonds to get some civilian clothes. The British press also printed the horrific story of a multiple murder all for the sake of a suit.9

  The behavior of the Dominici family on the first day of the investigation was remarkable. They claimed to have heard some shots but assumed that they were caused by poachers. They denied having heard any screams and appeared to be indifferent toward the victims. Both Gaston and Gustave admitted that they had got up during the night, but it was very strange that neither of them saw fit to see how the campers were doing. Gustave claimed to have found Elizabeth’s body when he went to see whether any further damage had been caused by the landslide, but when Sébeille asked why he had not gone to tell her parents, he gave the absolutely unbelievable answer that he had been far too scared to do so, because he imagined that the parents had killed her. The commissioner then asked why, after Gustave had told Jean-Marie Olivier that he had found Elizabeth’s body, he had gone to look after his animals rather than examining the campsite. Gustave also claimed that when he had hailed Olivier he had not seen Anne’s body, even though according to his testimony he had been standing only a few paces away. (Olivier claims to this day that Gustave had not stopped him, but he had halted because Gustave popped up from behind the Hillman.10) Gustave would then have been beside Anne’s body. Jack’s body was also just across the road, so it is impossible to believe that Gustave had not seen it. Sébeille also inquired why he had sent his pregnant wife, Yvette, on a bicycle to telephone the gendarmerie rather than going himself on his motorbike. Gustave was unable to give any satisfactory answers to such questions and appeared to find them very difficult to understand.

  The Dominicis stuck to their version of events. The previous evening Gustave had gone to Peyruis to report the landslide to Roure. The family had gone to bed at the usual hour. They had been awoken at about 1:00 a.m. by the sound of gunfire. It had crossed their minds that it might have had something to do with the English campers, but they had seen no reason why they should bother about them. Gaston had gotten up as usual at 4:30 a.m. to take his goats to pasture. Gustave had gotten up two hours later, as was his habit, and went immediately to look at the landslide to see whether the railway tracks were free. It was then that he had seen the body of the little girl. After Olivier had stopped and Gustave had asked him to inform the police that he had found a dead body, Gustave had returned to the farmhouse. None of the Dominicis had seen fit to go and see the little girl or to ascertain whether the English campers needed any assistance. They simply had waited for the gendarmes to arrive and told them they knew absolutely nothing of the events that had occurred so close to their home.

  Even given the notorious Provençal reluctance to have anything to do with matters that might possibly prove to be unpleasant, under the motto “Qui de rien ne se mêle, de rien ne se démêle” (Get involved, nothing solved), the attitude of the Dominicis is truly astonishing. Their subsequent variations on their original story, their obfuscations, and their recantations only served to prove that they had something they hoped to conceal. Whatever their original intentions might have been, the sudden appearance of Olivier on his motorcycle caught Gustave, who claimed ignorance, at the scene of the crime.

  Commissioner Sébeille’s father had been a famous detective who had solved a number of celebrated cases. Among the most spectacular was a multiple murder at Valensole in 1929. The Richauds, a farming family with two sons aged ten and three and a servant named Amaudric, were brutally murdered by their eighteen-year-old former farm laborer, Joseph Ughetto, and Stephan Mucha, his sixteen-year-old Polish lover. Mucha was saved from the guillotine thanks to his youth and given a twenty-year prison sentence, but Ughetto paid the ultimate penalty in Digne in January 1930. His father had gruesomely argued in court that he deserved to be executed. Ughetto’s was the last execution in the Basses-Alpes.

  Robert Sébeille had been the chief inspector of the Ninth Mobile Brigade in Marseille. The mobile brigades were elite police units formed in 1907 by Georges Clemenceau, who at that time was president of the council and minister of the interior. They were known as the Tiger Brigades, after Clemenceau’s nickname, which was earned by the ferocity with which he treated his opponents whether in peacetime or war. As French society underwent a profound social change, the brigades were designed as a dramatic response to an alarming increase in criminality that was only partially disguised behind the glittering belle époque facade. Police methods in France were hopelessly antiquated, having scarcely changed since the days of François Vidocq, a scintillating figure who had abandoned the life of a habitual criminal to become a highly successful, if singularly unconventional, policeman and who had served as a model for Honoré de Balzac’s sinister character Vautrin. In 1906, 106,000 crimes were left unsolved. Bands of brigands roamed the countryside, attacking isolated farmhouses, holding up trains, and acting as highwaymen. The most notorious of these gangs was the Chauffeurs de la Drôme, whose name came from their habit of applying flames to the soles of their victims’ feet so they would confess where they had hidden their money. Theirs was the stuff of pure fiction: by day they worked as honorable artisans and craftsmen; by night they were transformed into ruthless criminals, who between 1905 and 1908 terrorized the area between Valence and Romans-sur-Isère.

  Twelve mobile brigades formed an elite force that not only mastered such modern techniques as finger printing, anthropometrical indexing, and the scientific techniques of the criminologist Alphonse Bertillon but also were kept in top physical condition and trained in martial arts as well as the use of conventional weaponry. From the outset they were spectacularly successful in combating crime, and banditry soon disappeared. Having fulfilled their original mission, they were renamed the police judiciaire (judicial police) and charged with determining the violations of the penal code, collecting evidence, and finding criminals. On being informed of a crime, the public prosecutors would call upon their specialized services. A task force would then be formed that would concern itself exclusively with the crime in question.

  Robert Sébeille was a member of the Tiger Brigade in Marseille from the beginning, having been posted from Avignon in February 1908. During his long and distinguished career, he had earned the reputation of being a model policeman: wise, evenhanded, and having the common touch. Edmond, although he greatly admired his father, was determined to step out from under his shadow by swiftly solving the Drummonds’ hideous murders, which had already gained widespread notoriety. He had found what he was convinced was the murder weapon. He felt that there was nothing more to be learned from the murder site. Above all he prided himself for having a unique understanding of the Provençal mind that would enable him to get at the heart of the matter in next to no time. But he would soon find himself lost in a labyrinth of half-truths, lies, contradictions, and surly silences that would leave him disheartened and frustrated.

  Greatly flattered by the attention afforded him by the hordes of journalists that descended upon the Grand’ Terre, he rapidly decided to groom himself to be a media star. He cut a striking figure with his recently purchased cigarette holder and dashing foulard. He made the mistake of spending far too much time in the company of journalists over aperitifs at the expense of more humdrum police work. For their part the journalists talked at length with the Dominicis, who were every bit a
s flattered by their attention as was the commissioner. At first there were some fifty of them, but soon there were more than eighty, seriously hampering the police investigation. It got to the point that even the publicity-hungry Sébeille began to get irritated.

  Already considering himself a celebrity, Sébeille was obliged to live very modestly while working on the case. With a per diem out-of-town allowance of a mere 1,500 francs ($4.30), he could not afford a hotel room. He found lodgings in a large gloomy house at Peyruis, on the main road, run by two elderly sisters. His four assistants shared the two other available bedrooms and were obliged to sleep together in double beds. They took their meals at the home of the redoubtable Madame Geoffroy. As Sébeille remarked, they could not afford to get very thirsty.

  Convinced that he had found the murder weapon, Sébeille set out on 6 August to find its owner. First, he went up the hill to the village of Lurs and visited the mayor’s office. He received a frosty welcome. It was no warmer at his other ports of call in the vicinity. Even if anyone had known the owner, no one was going to admit it, for that would amount to the denunciation of a neighbor. Sébeille’s much-vaunted understanding of the peasant mind had been put to the test and had been found seriously wanting. Followed by a horde of insistent journalists, he went from farm to farm, but his inquiries were shrugged off in mute incomprehension or met with sullen silence.