The Dominici Affair

by Martin Kitchen

  Gaston was then asked whether he had anything to say. He launched into an antiphony of “I’m honest and loyal” and the like until he was interrupted by Charrier, who said that the invitation to speak on his own behalf was merely a formality and that he should say nothing. Immediately Gaston muttered, “Ah, so it’s a formality. I don’t understand anything, nothing at all!” Catching sight of Clovis, he spat out, “You filthy bastard!” After ten grueling days the trial was finally over, but was the Dominici affair now closed?

  Gaston’s nephew Léon, a strongly built man with a commanding presence, was standing in the corridor outside the courtroom when he heard the verdict. Overcome with emotion he rushed outside to where Gaston’s grandson Marcel Dominici was waiting anxiously in the courtyard. Together they walked in silence through the wind and rain to a little hotel where the “clan of the faithful”—Yvette Perrin, Gustave Dominici, and Augusta Caillat—were eating sandwiches. On hearing the news, Yvette fell sobbing into her husband’s arms. Augusta ran out of the room to hide in their car, quietly sobbing. Marcel, then drove them all to the Grand’ Terre, where old Marie had a wood fire burning. They stayed until six o’clock, and then Marcel drove Augusta home.

  Clovis, who had left the courtroom alone with tears in his eyes, entertained some journalists in his modest home in Peyruis. He told them he was convinced that his father had acted alone but confessed that he had not thought that Gaston would receive a death sentence.

  Commissioner Charles Gillard, a senior policeman from Paris who was present at the trial as an observer, told the press, “The verdict and the condemnation to death cannot be considered satisfactory. A disagreeable impression remains of lies and of the impossibility of knowing whether one is more guilty than another.”14 The commissioner, who would play a prominent role in a later inquiry into the case, thus demonstrated that he was already predisposed to believe that Gaston Dominici had not acted alone.

  With the trial over, the “Lurs Affair” became known as the “Dominici Affair.” A trial that had been expected to last for four days had stretched to ten. The outcome came as no surprise. The newspapers had already created the picture of a vicious old man, a homicidal patriarch, and a drunken brute. This impression was reinforced by the representation in court of his curriculum vitae. Much here hinged on interpretative nuance. Was he miserly or economical? Was he healthily libidinous or sexually obsessed? Was he harshly authoritarian or merely strict with his children? Much was made of how he had aided in the birth of several of his children, implying a bestial indifference to his unfortunate wife; but the reports did not mention that this practice was common since there were no midwives in the region at that time and the doctor lived miles away. The Dominicis had neither a telephone nor a car, and at that time the road was unpaved. Even the fact that he had been involved in a fight fifty years earlier weighed heavily against him.

  The Gaston Dominici who appeared in court seemed to bear little resemblance to the sadistic brute of the public imagination. Here was a simple old man in his Sunday best, full of native cunning, frequently smiling, slyly winking, joking with the warders, being sarcastic, and innocently believing that he would be able to speak his mind, would be heard, and would be believed. He played many roles—archetypical peasant, clan chieftain, simple goatherd, politician, and demagogue—but he never once looked as though he were a man charged with an appalling crime on trial for his life. Under constant attack from the presiding judge, Gaston frequently lost his temper, so he increasingly appeared as a violent, intractable, arrogant, authoritarian, and proud man who believed in nothing, who cared for nobody, and who was governed by feverish egotism.

  The communist press, once the ardent defenders of the Dominicis but now determined to disassociate themselves from a man who was universally reviled, had no doubt that Gaston was guilty. Le Dauphiné Libéré gave twelve reasons for his guilt:

  1. He had told Edmond Sébeille that Lady Drummond had died “without suffering.”

  2. He had claimed to have found a splinter of wood from the butt of the carbine under Elizabeth’s head at nine o’clock in the morning of 5 August, when a gravedigger had found it at three o’clock that afternoon.

  3. He had gone without the slightest hesitation to the shed where the carbine had been kept.

  4. He had positioned himself during the reconstruction of the crime at the exact spot where the ejected cartridges had been found.

  5. He knew that a bullet had wounded Elizabeth.

  6. Without knowing the contents of the autopsy report, he knew that Sir Jack had been shot in the back.

  7. He alone knew that the first shot had caused the wound on Sir Jack’s hand.

  8. He knew exactly where Inspector Henri Ranchin had found the barrel of the carbine and the spot where he had washed his hands in the Durance and maintained that he “didn’t have to wash his trousers as there was no blood on them.”

  9. He admitted that, just like the murderer, he did not know how to shoot the carbine.

  10. He had given details of the aluminum band used to repair the carbine, even before it was known that it was from a bicycle license plate.

  11. He had told Pierre Prudhomme that Lady Drummond was wearing a dress with a leaf pattern.

  12. He had claimed that Gustave was in the alfalfa field at two o’clock in the morning, but on another occasion he had said that at that time he was talking to him in the courtyard. After his confession, he had also told Sébeille exactly where the bodies had been before they were moved.

  All this information was in addition to his own confessions, made without intimidation, violence, or drugs, plus the denunciations of his two sons. Quite apart from the dubious assertions in several of these points, particularly numbers 5–8 and 11, that the communist press insisted so vehemently on Gaston’s guilt was grist to the conspiracy theorists’ mill. Further, it was taken as further evidence of the Soviet Union’s complicity in the murders.15

  The French had serious misgivings, for the trial had been conducted according to a dubious procedure introduced by the Vichy regime that had not been repealed. In 1941 the “jury of peers,” analogous to the British jury system, was abolished and replaced by a seven-man jury, accompanied by three judges: the presiding judge—in this case Marcel Bousquet—and two assistants (assesseurs), Roger Combas and André Debeaurain. The verdict was by simple majority vote. Thus, since the three judges were almost certain to vote guilty, only the votes of three jurymen were needed for the accused to be condemned to death. The judges, experts in the law, would not find it difficult to persuade most jurymen of their point of view.16

  Gaston’s arrest had taken a load off France’s conscience, but now it became troubled again. The general agreement was that although the court was biased against the accused, with the presiding judge desperately trying to defend a less than satisfactory dossier, Gaston was guilty of the murders of Sir Jack and Lady Drummond; but there was considerable doubt about whether he alone had killed Elizabeth. A Gallup poll showed that 45 percent of the French thought that Gaston was solely guilty; 25 percent thought that Gustave had had a hand in the murders; 10 percent already believed in some form of conspiracy involving the British secret service, the Maquis, or the Soviet Union; and the remainder had no opinion. It was not long before doubt was cast on the verdict, not least because the spectacular trials of Marie Besnard, who was accused of being a serial arsenic poisoner, happened at the same time. She was in the end acquitted. Would Gaston also be eventually exonerated? What truth was hidden behind the body of lies created by the dreadful Dominici clan?

  The British press was delighted at the conviction. The “Lion of Lurs” was now “a cold, cunning and pitiless old man of 77,” from “a tight-lipped hostile and fearful peasant community unable or unwilling to help (the police).”17 But the papers had little time to analyze the trial, for on 30 November the nation celebrated Winston Churchill’s eightieth birthday. In France the question of German rearmament was at the top of the age
nda, a fresh controversy having been stirred up by Churchill’s sensational announcement that in 1945 he had ordered Gen. Bernard Montgomery not to disarm the Germans because they might soon be needed for use against the Russians.18 The French press also had its preoccupations: French rule in Indochina had come to an end, the polar air route to North America was opened, Vyshinsky had died, and Colonel Nasser had replaced Gen. Muhammad Neguib, beginning a new and threatening era for the colonial powers in the Middle East.

  The Dominici trial had been an extraordinary show. White-gloved Republican Guards presented arms each time the court rose. Pretty young law students from Aix-en-Provence adorned the front row seats. Photographers clambered all over the place to get good shots, resolutely ignoring the presiding judge’s ruling against the use of flash. Women screamed and fainted. Lawyers shouted. Witnesses gesticulated. The public booed. Most of the Dominici clan lied, even over such trivial points that it seemed as if they did it for fun. Gustave received a chorus of boos when he said that he was not lying when he said that he had lied. Clovis left the courtroom smiling. Gustave looked grim. Zézé, the Daily Mirror’s “rosy-cheeked butcher’s boy,” whistled a merry tune and took a ride on a carousel at the fair. Most of the Dominicis went to the cinema. All this took place in the dingy little town of Digne-les-Bains, where it rained for seventeen straight days.

  Once the initial excitement was over, a period of reflection and unease began. The French press, uninhibited about the way the case was reported because the concept of contempt of court did not apply, was unsparing in its criticism of the trial and particularly of the performance by Judge Bousquet. Although frequently hard hitting, the coverage overall was evenhanded. There was no attempt even on the part of the communist press to revive the absurd stories about Sir Jack Drummond’s being a secret agent who had parachuted into France to work with the Maquis, nor was there the slightest attempt to discredit him in any way. With the exception of L’Aurore, the French press was uncertain whether Gaston had committed the crime, and even that paper thought that he might not have acted alone. The press pointed out there was no convincing motive for the crime, and the medical evidence about the time of Elizabeth’s death did not seem to fit very well with the prosecution’s version of events. It pointed out the police had gone to exaggerated lengths to obtain a confession, and it widely criticized the president’s refusal to place the Dominicis under oath. Furthermore, the press expressed much concern about the comparatively recent changes in court procedure, as a result of which the president of the court and his two assistants sat with the seven jurymen during their retirement. The practice of summing up in open court, as in the British system, had been abandoned in 1881 on the grounds that it usually amounted to little more than yet another speech for the prosecution. Critics of these changes argued that formerly the summing up was in the presence of the counsel for the defense, whereas under the then current system the presiding judge’s influence was likely to be even more unfavorable to the accused because he consulted privately with the jurors. The widespread feeling was that condemning the old man was the best way of getting rid of an embarrassing case. Anyway, at his advanced age he would not be executed, so no great harm would be done.

  There was widespread criticism of the police’s policy of conducting an open investigation with daily press conferences so that professional confidentiality gave way to a sensationalist journalism, turning the case into a detective story that inevitably inflamed public opinion. The police also ignored material evidence and concentrated solely on getting a confession, which on its own was insufficient proof of guilt. Many commentators in France argued that had the case been tried in an English court, where the accused was treated with a far greater degree of impartiality, Gaston Dominici would never have been convicted.

  In Britain the Dominici trial soon came under attack as a blatant example of the inadequacies and injustices of French criminal law. Outspoken criticism came from surprising sources. The Times pulled no punches in an editorial:

  France, like Britain, is a member of an alliance of countries bound together not only by bonds of interest but also by a community of ideals. Those who set store on the good example of the western alliance cannot help feeling disturbed at recent trends by which French justice—turning back on the reforms, however imperfect, of the Revolution—seems to be reverting to practices of an earlier regime: the confessions under pressure, the toleration of police methods which the law reproves, the prolonged detention of suspects before trial, the admission of irrelevant evidence, and the licence allowed to the Press, to witnesses, and even to magistrates to besmirch reputations and constantly to ignore the essential presumption of innocence.19

  The writer boldly suggested that at least the conviction was not a foregone conclusion. But in 1949 a longshoreman named Jean Deshays was accused of murdering an old man and of the attempted murder of his wife. He was condemned to twenty years’ imprisonment, but after four years the true culprit was found. Deshays was released. Marguerite Marty, condemned for murdering her rival in a ménage à trois in 1953, was declared innocent. The Dominici case was also subject to a form of revision with a fresh inquiry against an “Unknown” (or “X”). Procedures, methods, and practices may be bad, it was argued, but the aims of a fresh inquiry were laudable. This distinguished current practice from the forms of partisan justice after the liberation. Public outrage at the police’s dubious and often ruthless methods was bound to lead to reform.

  A number of British newspapers, particularly the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, and the News Chronicle, were prone to sensationalism. They suggested sinister political motives were behind the murders and that Sir Jack had been involved in clandestine operations during the war, but at least they were restrained by British libel laws and the concern not to be found in contempt of court.20

  The Dominici trial set off a healthy debate in France on reforming the criminal justice system. Attorney Reliquet, chairman of the Federal Union of French Magistrates, wrote an open letter to President René Coty protesting the press and radio attacks on the magistracy in connection with recent trials. Magistrates were, he claimed, themselves the victims of “an archaic judicial organization” and were well aware of “grave imperfections” in a system of criminal justice that was “already technically ill-adapted to the requirements of modern life.” Vicious attacks of this sort merely hindered the vital process of considered reform. Who, he asked, would want to become a judge or magistrate in such an atmosphere? People in such responsible positions needed “the esteem and confidence of fellow citizens.” The conservative daily newspaper Le Figaro, which was outspoken in its criticisms of the criminal justice system and thereby became the principal target of Reliquet’s ire, defended itself by saying that “strict observance of the letter of the law would be sufficient to eliminate many of the abuses which have been brought to light in recent trials” while lamenting that “judicial habits and usage have deteriorated in France to a serious degree.”21

  10

  The Chenevier Inquiry

  On 28 November, a few hours after he was condemned to death by the guillotine, Gaston Dominici took pencil and paper and scribbled a note addressed to his daughter Clotilde Araman. It read:

  Dear All,

  I am writing these few lines to give you my news, which could be a great deal less awful and better than they are, and less cruel. I am always thinking of you all and that you have not abandoned me in my suffering and my distress. The grief that I endure at the moment is due to an evil person, who has dragged me into the greatest and most cruel form of dishonor that a man could endure. All sorts of lies, I do not dare blame him, I thought he would give himself up to tell the truth to the magistrates, but he has not done so at all. I thought he would say it, but Maître Pollak has not been able to make him do so. OK, so I will tell Maître Charles-Alfred tomorrow, because I cannot stand such dishonor.

  Dear Clotilde, I think you might want to go and get my two goats, a white and the ligh
t brown one. Leave the longhaired ones. I am telling you this, because you deserve it. Go and get them as soon as possible. I have written to your sister Augusta at the same time as to you. I asked her to go and get your mother as soon as possible and take her down with you. I have told your sister and Clément [her brother-in-law] everything they should take.

  Share my pictures [by which he meant his military records and certificates of agricultural merit and of civil courage] and do your best, because the bailiffs will come soon, because the farm will be sold to pay all my costs in the civil case. You might like to write to me, because you cannot come and see me. I have asked to sign an appeal. On Saturday I got a letter from Belgium asking me for the story of my life. They will give me seven million.

  Signed: DOMINICI Gaston1

  The letter caused something of a sensation when it was published on 4 December. It was widely assumed that Léon Charles-Alfred would soon reveal the full truth. It was also read to mean that Gaston had resigned himself to spending the rest of his life in prison, and that in itself was a confession of guilt. Some felt that he no longer hoped to clear his name but that he would identify an accomplice, who was believed to be Gustave. In the bars in the region, people spoke of Gustave’s role in the Resistance. He was openly accused of murder and robbery. Even the Dominici clan were now distancing themselves from him. After his mother left the Grand’ Terre, none of the family came to visit him. At the market in Forcalquier, Yvette’s father, François Barth, announced to all and sundry that the Dominicis were a bunch of bandits, and they all deserved to hang.

  The day after the sentence was delivered Gaston had signed an appeal in the prison warden’s office in Digne in the presence of his lawyer, Charles-Alfred, and a representative of the Digne court, Madame Gabrielle Guieu. On leaving the prison Charles-Alfred told the assembled journalists that he felt that the case had reached a turning point. Gaston regretted that his family had not had the courage to speak up in court, but he still hoped that some family members would tell the truth. The lawyer seemed to be almost overcome with emotion when he spoke of his conviction that his client was innocent.