The Dominici Affair

by Martin Kitchen

  The extremely crude language Gaston had used when describing his encounter with Lady Drummond was absolutely shocking at the time and still seems lubriciously prurient. No journalist dared print his statement verbatim, and nobody believed that a respectable English lady would willingly have sexual intercourse with a seventy-six-year-old peasant in the middle of the night while lying on gravel only a few feet away from her husband. Moreover, the autopsy revealed no sign of recent sexual activity, and Anne was fully clothed and wearing panties when her body was discovered.

  Since Jack Drummond was wearing shoes, he almost certainly was not lying in bed fast asleep. The autopsy showed that he had an empty bladder, thus providing ample explanation for his shoes being unlaced. Gaston’s statement that he woke up “shortly afterward” is typically vague. It is not at all clear precisely what act was completed immediately before Jack awoke, although it is implied that it was after the conclusion of this fantasy copulation.

  Drummond had not been shot through the hand, although there was a gash across his palm. Had a bullet passed through his hand, he would not have been able to grab Gaston by the neck. Even if the gun had gone off accidentally, it must have been cocked with the safety catch released. No one ever questioned Gaston on this important point.

  Gaston claimed to have fired one or two shots at Lady Drummond, but she was hit by three rounds. His testimony about the number of cartridges is also contradictory. An M1 magazine holds fifteen rounds. Gaston claimed it was full, yet after firing six or seven rounds it was empty. How was it also that all the rounds in his pocket had suddenly disappeared? In addition, there is the question of what he did during that period of well over an hour before he went back to bed. Last, again it would have been impossible for Elizabeth to have climbed out of the back of the Hillman as the rear door did not open from the inside.

  Having obtained this signed confession, Périès wanted to reconstruct the crime that afternoon, but he was told that there was a crowd of about two thousand onlookers at the Grand’ Terre. News of the confession had been broadcasted and it was a Sunday afternoon. He therefore realized that he would have to postpone the reenactment until the following day. In the meantime, he decided to confront Gaston with his sons Gustave and Clovis.

  Clovis was led into the room, and his father’s statement was read to him. He said that he stuck to his original statement. When Commissioner Sébeille had shown him the gun, he recognized it at once as the one that was kept in the shed at the Grand’ Terre and that he had seen it two or three times. He had gone to the shed on 5 August and noticed that it was missing. He initially had taken this to mean that Gustave had committed the murders. He continued to believe so until sometime in the fall of 1952, while Gustave was in jail, and one evening after supper, when they were alone together in the kitchen, his father had said that he had shot the English. He added that on this occasion his father had “drunk more than usual.” Given Gaston’s reported phenomenal capacity for alcohol, it must have been a vast amount. Gaston did not deny this statement. He simply said that he could not remember the incident.

  Clovis then repeated that his father had said, “I bumped off all three of them. If I had to do it again, I would do it.”16 Clovis had assumed that this reference to doing it “again” referred to his mother, with whom his father had just had yet another blazing row and who had gone to bed to escape his rage. Gaston muttered, “It’s possible that I said that, but I can’t remember.”

  Clovis then added one odd detail to his statement. He did not think that his father had initially taken the M1 with him that night but had returned to the farm to fetch it after a confrontation with the Drummonds. This version certainly made more sense. It suggested that Gaston wanted to chase the Drummonds away.

  Gustave was then brought in to confront his father. He said that he had heard his father’s footsteps at four o’clock in the morning and gotten up to ask him whether he had heard the shots. His father had replied in the affirmative, adding that he was responsible. At this point Gaston interjected, “Thank you very much, Master Gustave.”17 This snide remark set off a lengthy slanging match in dialect, after which Gustave continued his statement. He said that he had asked his father whether he had gone mad. Gaston replied that he had gotten up to see the landslide and to do a little hunting. He did not say how the quarrel with the Drummonds had started. He had simply said that after a discussion, the Englishman had approached him and that he had shot at him. Gustave then went to the spot where his father had said that the little girl was lying. He went next to the campsite, and when he went back to the farmhouse, he looked in the shed to see whether his father had used the American carbine. It was no longer there. That morning he did not notice whether there was a pair of his father’s trousers hanging in the yard. Nor did he notice whether his father’s trousers were bloodstained “at the time of these events.”18

  This is the first time that the question of the trousers hanging out to dry is mentioned in the written records. The matter was never pursued until the entire case was investigated anew. Gaston said that he did not have to wash his trousers, because they were not bloodstained. He added that he could not remember if he had told Gustave that it was he who had fired the shots. It is curious that Gaston readily admitted to having blood on his hands but fiercely denied that he had any on his trousers. The examining magistrate, appearing not to have noticed this anomaly, asked no further questions about the matter.

  Gustave went on to say that he had spoken to no one about this incident until a few days after he had been released from prison. He said Clovis had confided to him, when they were working together in the Saint-Pons wood, that their father had fired the shots. Clovis, who had already told Sébeille about the Saint-Pons incident on 13 November, affirmed that this was indeed the case and that he had broached the subject. It seems hard to believe that the two brothers had not spoken to one another about the crime for over four months, even though Gustave was the prime suspect. Gustave then stated that his father had confessed to the crime at four o’clock in the morning of 5 August.

  The brothers thus leveled serious accusations against their father, but they offered the examining magistrate no hard piece of evidence that could be used to bolster his case. Loath to probe any deeper for fear that the entire case would collapse, Périès decided to call it a day.

  Gaston had thus confessed to the crime on several occasions: to his sons Gustave and Clovis, to the policemen Guérino and Bocca, to Commissioners Sébeille and Prudhomme, and to Examining Magistrate Périès. On two occasions he had seized upon the suggestion of a motive. First, that it was an accident; second, a consequence of his thwarted sexual appetite. All of these confessions differed in several ways, but most were incongruously presented as a means of preserving the family’s honor, particularly that of his grandchildren.

  During the afternoon, Commissioner Harzic, the head of the Ninth Mobile Brigade in Marseille and Sébeille’s superior, made a statement to the press. It contained a number of astonishing errors. First, he said that Gaston had confessed to the crime at seven o’clock in the morning, quoting him has having said, “Yes, I killed them. I acted alone.” The initial confession had been in the early evening and was not in the form Harzic had claimed. He then went on to say that Gaston had left the house to hunt badgers that had been attacking his chickens, but there is no record of him ever having made such a claim. Harzic next stated that Gaston carried the gun by the sling, even though he must have known that it did not have one. He further said that Gustave had watched Anne while she was washing.

  There followed a somewhat garbled version of the murders. According to Harzic, Gustave had been awoken by the shots and was waiting for his father in the farmyard when he returned. Gaston, it was claimed, had then confessed all. Clovis had come to the Grand’ Terre in the morning and had been “let into the secret.” Apparently it was Yvette who had persuaded her husband to tell Clovis and to make sure that he corroborated the story. None of this informati
on can be found in the police records.19

  With astonishing disregard for the principle of presumption of innocence, the local press outdid itself in denouncing Gaston Dominici. Le Méridional’s headline read, “Father Dominici Is the Drummonds’ Assassin.” La Marseillaise announced, “Gaston Dominici Is the Lurs Assassin.” Le Provençal also confirmed that “Gaston Dominici is the Drummonds’ assassin.”

  Given the inconsistencies between Gaston’s various versions of the crime, Périès decided to go ahead with the reconstruction of the crime before pressing charges. He had a powerful motive for such a postponement. At that time under French law, a person had no right to engage a lawyer until charges were laid. Périès knew that the prominent lawyer Émile Pollak and his associate Pierre Charrier were hovering in the wings, eager to become involved in this sensational case. That both were active members of the Communist Party was a further reason to keep them off the case as long as possible. He certainly did not want them to be in any way involved in the reconstruction, and all subsequent attempts by the defense to reenact the drama were flatly refused.

  During the night of 15–16 November, the gendarmes closed the road leading past the Grand’ Terre. Journalists were permitted to witness the proceedings the morning of the sixteenth but were cordoned off by the gendarmerie on the other side of the road. The correspondent from The Times described this as “a conventional part of French police investigations, however strange to English eyes.”20 Somehow or other the Dominici family had been forewarned, because most of the family members, with the notable exception of Clovis, were ready and waiting in the farmhouse.

  The prosecutors arrived with Gaston at nine o’clock. His appearance prompted shrieks of anguish from within the building, the chorus led by the redoubtable Augusta Caillat. The gendarmes’ cordon was singularly ineffective. There was already a large crowd of curious onlookers, and as Gaston descended from the police car, many shouted out, “Death!”21 He appeared to be unmoved by such hostility and waved cheerily to the press photographers.22

  The proceedings began with a visit to the shed, where Gaston was asked to show where the carbine had been kept. Using his cane, he clearly pointed to the top shelf. Since the police photographer’s flash did not function properly, he repeated this gesture three times. The transcript, however, clearly states that he had shown it was kept on the lower shelf, as his two sons had stated. Gustave and Clovis were then asked the same question. The photographs clearly show them pointing to the lower shelf. This discrepancy between the photographic evidence and the written testimony was to prove very embarrassing to the prosecution when the case was reopened. Yvette pointed out that if it had been kept on the lower shelf, everyone would have been able to see it. Faced with this awkward fact, Clovis would change his testimony and claim that it had been kept on the upper shelf.

  Gaston then walked toward the scene of the crime. It is not at all clear from various accounts of these events quite what happened during the enactment. Did he carry the gun in his right hand and his cane in the left, or did he take the gun in his left hand and hold his hat in the right to cover his face, leaving his cane behind? Or did he walk with his cane in the right hand and his hat on his head, while Sébeille walked beside him carrying the weapon?

  Precisely what then happened is also opened to conjecture. According to the transcript Gaston took charge of the proceedings, voluntarily and unhesitatingly reenacting the murder. Some of the journalists, who watched from across the road, confirm this version of events, but others insist that he was cajoled, questioned, and forced to change his story. One even claimed that he looked like a marionette, manipulated by the gendarmes.23 Whatever the case, it seemed that Gaston more or less confirmed by his actions what he had said in the various confessions but with one important exception. In his confession to Périès, he had said that having fired the first shot, which wounded Jack in the hand, he had fired a second time virtually at point-blank range. Now he showed the second shot as having been fired at some distance and from behind as he had previously stated to Prudhomme. He only mimed having shot Anne once. Thus, during the reconstruction Gaston claimed to have fired only three shots, the number that Gustave and Yvette claimed to have heard, but it does not coincide with the coroners’ evidence.

  The vexing issues of the pool of blood by the sump and the piece of flesh on the Hillman’s bumper were not addressed. Incredibly, no photographs had been taken of these valuable pieces of material evidence.

  Using his cane to imitate the carbine, Gaston reloaded the gun after each imaginary shot, indicating that he did not know that the M1 was semiautomatic. He showed that he had fired from the shoulder, whereas the autopsy proved that the two shots on Jack had been fired from the hip.

  A critical issue was to discover whether a man of Gaston’s advanced age who always walked with a cane could have caught up with Elizabeth as she ran away. One of the inspectors played the role of Elizabeth, and Gaston ran after him at an incredible speed for a man of seventy-seven. It is also extraordinary that he put such an effort into this sprint, and it served further to strengthen Périès’s conviction that he was guilty. But Gaston was a proud man, given to vaunting his strength, virility, and prowess. He was unable to resist the challenge. There was yet another motive. When he was halfway across the bridge, he scrambled up and onto the parapet, intent on throwing himself onto the railway lines. Here he showed considerably less agility, and Périès, who had been an enthusiastic rugby player in his youth, tackled him and thus frustrated his suicide attempt. The scene had an element of comedy in that Gaston and Périès both lost their hats in the chase. When they went back to get them, each took the other’s and put them on. In their confusion it took them a while to notice their mistake and make the exchange.

  Gaston was initially reluctant to reenact killing Elizabeth. Twice he refused. Then Sébeille’s assistant, Inspector Girolami, knelt down in front of him while Gaston, brandishing his cane above his head, said: “Don’t be afraid, I won’t hit you!”24 Gaston had always reacted violently whenever Elizabeth’s name was mentioned, so this bizarre utterance was not untypical. Somewhat later when Sébeille told him that someone wanted to erect a monument at the spot where Elizabeth was killed, he said that even if they built a fence around it, the dogs would still shit on it.

  Having mimed how he had killed Elizabeth, Gaston then went to the promontory where he had stood to throw the gun into the river. He went to the spot he had told Périès about the day before, not the one he had described in his confession to Commissioner Sébeille. He then pointed out the place where he had washed his hands, but he refused to walk down to the river. He now claimed that he went back to the campsite to cover the bodies before washing his hands, whereas in his statement to the commissioner he said that he had washed his hands first.

  All those present were struck by the presence of Paul Maillet, who paced about inside the cordoned-off area, chain-smoking. With a beaming smile on his face, he kept repeating the phrase, “The old man wanted to get me, but I’ve got him!” This statement is strange, because nowhere in the records is there any mention of Gaston making an accusation against Paul Maillet. But that morning, when Gaston first noticed Maillet, he waved his cane at him and yelled, “Come here, punk! Fucking assassin! You held the carbine, eh, you bastard!”25 The ambiguity of this statement is less obvious when translated into English. The implication is that Paul Maillet held the weapon in his possession rather than that he physically held it in his hands when the murders were committed. Neither the judge nor the gendarmes saw fit to investigate this accusation, and Gaston never repeated it. It can therefore be assumed that Gaston’s outburst was simply directed at a man who had denounced his son and brought the Dominici family under suspicion. Similarly, Maillet’s glee at Gaston’s predicament was revenge for the shabby way in which he had treated his father.

  The reconstruction of the crime having been completed, Examining Magistrate Périès and Commissioners Harzic, Sébeille, and Co
nstant congratulated themselves in front of the journalists on a job well done. Such behavior, seemingly inappropriate in the extreme, was common practice in such cases at that time. What was very unusual was that Sébeille openly congratulated Paul Maillet with the words, “Well, Mr. Maillet, today you have witnessed your victory.”26 This remark is a clear indication not only of the degree of antagonism between Maillet and Gaston but also of the close relationship Maillet had with the commissioner.

  The entire operation took a mere three-quarters of an hour. Such haste is possibly explained by the commissioners’ fears that Gaston might withdraw his confession, although the journalists who witnessed the scene said that he was cool, calm, and collected throughout, apart from his outburst against Paul Maillet. Gaston was now bundled into a police van and formally charged with murder on the way back to Digne. Périès told him that he should now get a lawyer, to which he replied, “I don’t want a lawyer—unless you are prepared to pay one for me.” This was a strange remark given that Émile Pollak and Pierre Charrier had been at his family’s side for the last fifteen months, ever since 6 August 1952. The following day Gaston had a defense team of four lawyers, but it is uncertain who selected them.27 None were provided by the court. It also remains a mystery how the Dominicis managed to pay for Gaston’s defense.

  An angry crowd waited outside the prison in Digne for Gaston’s return. As he was led back to his cell, there were cries of “death!” Lucien Grimaud in La Marseillaise abandoned his previous support for the Dominicis to give an absurdly bombastic expression of the widespread revulsion toward Gaston Dominici:

  Like one of the wild animals that he hunted down and slaughtered in the Lurs mountains, the old poacher, this ruffian from the banks of the Durance, has spat his venom, shown his fangs and once again spread evil. The confession of his atrocious crime aroused horror among those whose hopes for so many months were dashed by his threats and sarcasm. He sought to appear even more gruesome as he sank ever deeper into ignominy. As of yesterday the name of Gaston Dominici has joined those of the most odious in criminal history.28