Inside The Mind Of A Killer

by Jean-Francois Abgrall

  I interrupted. ‘Francis, do you remember how you placed your hands around the woman’s throat?’

  ‘Yes, very clearly.’

  I asked him to repeat the gesture on Éric.

  ‘But gently, OK?’

  In an instant, Heaulme grabbed my partner by the throat. He only needed to squeeze a little harder to leave the same finger and nail marks as those found on Aline Pérès’s neck. Slowly, he withdrew his hand. He carried on:

  ‘Philippe, “The Gaul”, cleared off. I’ve never seen him again. I couldn’t move. The woman was lying at my feet. She wasn’t dead. She was looking me straight in the eyes. I think her carotid had burst. It was an accident, this business …’

  I let him describe his horrific crime. The coldly recorded details would serve as proof at the trial.

  It was 4 p.m., the interview was over. Francis was very calm, as if unaware of the gravity of his declarations. For my part, I felt relieved to have taken things to their logical conclusion. The answer was hidden behind the last card. That night, Aline Pérès’s murderer would sleep behind bars. The first night of a long spell in prison, in all probability. The satisfaction of a job well done is relative, for it implies more suffering for another family. The Moulin Blanc killer would now be locked up, shut away from the world.

  His appearance before the Strasbourg prosecutor was set for 6 p.m. the same day. Meanwhile, the three of us went to the lounge. The officer from the local criminal investigation unit, Jean-Louis B, was with us. He had been assigned to our case. It was the second time he had met Francis here. He was familiar with our investigation and asked me if we had finished. Francis did not give me time to reply, but said, ‘Yes, it was me, but it was an accident. I’ve explained it all to François and Éric.’

  Jean-Louis went on, ‘And what about Avignon?’

  To our amazement, Heaulme replied, ‘That was me too! There I used a big stone to crush his head.’

  This new admission came like a bolt from the blue. I was speechless. But this confession could not be included in the case I was handling. Officially, I was only mandated for the Moulin Blanc murder. How could we go about endorsing any further declarations? If Francis was ready to talk, we could not record him. Only the investigator from Avignon was legally entitled to do so. We contacted him at once, but he refused to come. The excuse he gave – that he would interview Heaulme once he was behind bars – seemed feeble. As investigators, we knew he was taking a very big risk. This situation might never arise again.

  Jean-Louis left us for a moment and returned with another investigator. They questioned Francis about Avignon. Amused by the situation, Francis confirmed his initial account. They decided to draw up a statement, even if it had no legal status.

  Other investigators came into the lounge discussing their cases. Francis, absorbed in drinking an orange juice, seemed oblivious to what was going on around him. However, he did react to the remark by one colleague. ‘I’m having a problem with some Turks and a series of burglaries,’ said the gendarme. ‘They won’t admit anything, even though they are in possession of stolen goods.’

  Francis put down his plastic cup and without the slightest hesitation offered to help. ‘Do you want me to get them to talk? I can come with you!’

  The situation was almost comic, but everyone remained serious.

  ‘No, thank you,’ replied the gendarme, surprised and embarrassed.

  5.30 p.m. Now it was time to go to the Law Courts. We clambered back into the unmarked Peugeot 205 placed at our disposal. Éric drove, Jean-Louis sat in front and Francis and I were a bit squashed in the back – Heaulme was nearly two metres tall. This time, he was handcuffed. He had agreed without a fuss.

  An escort was waiting for us in front of the Law Courts. We handed over our prisoner. In a few moments he would be brought before the investigating magistrate, who would notify him of his arrest. We hastily said goodbye.

  Strasbourg was simply a stage where Heaulme was in transit. In less than a week, he would be in Brest prison. There, experts would study his case, there would doubtless be more conversations. I hoped to be able to understand the man he was inside. How many other murders had he committed? Other women? Men? Children? Where, when, and above all, why? I was still far from knowing all the answers.

  PART TWO

  Dangerous liaisons

  6

  True and false faces of Heaulme

  A little get-together was organised on my return to Rennes. My colleagues had booked a dining room in an Alsatian brasserie, and I contributed a few bottles of wine from the Strasbourg region. It’s a tradition to celebrate the end of an investigation in this manner.

  Everybody was at this dinner, even Major JR. The atmosphere was friendly and relaxed. My colleagues presented me with a cork notice board covered with various references to the investigation. A white windmill made out of card symbolising Moulin Blanc was pinned to the centre of the board, and there was an hourglass full of red sand as a reminder of the slowness of the investigation, and the Opinel knife which I never found. It was a nice gesture, a way of gently turning the page. But during the months to come, I was unlikely to forget the mysterious Francis Heaulme. Quite the opposite.

  It was the end of January 1992, and I was utterly convinced that Francis Heaulme was the author of a series of murders. I circulated a memo to this effect all over the country. Responses soon came pouring in. Several requests for information landed on my desk. They came from regional police stations or gendarmeries investigating homicides. They all wanted to know the itinerary of Aline Pérès’s murderer. There was a prospect of further meetings with this elusive man.

  I was far from displeased. In fact, I was keen to resume our strange conversations. I wanted to understand why he killed. I didn’t think his crimes were motiveless. Something was at the root of his murderous impulses, but what?

  I was no longer dealing with the Moulin Blanc case, but I could talk to Francis Heaulme about other matters. Before embarking on a new round of interviews, I set up a meeting with the presiding magistrate.

  Reconstructed after World War Two, like the rest of the city, the Brest Law Courts are a single block. Several storeys high, this granite building overlooks the docks. It was here that the investigating magistrate awaited me on the morning of 27 March 1992. This discreet, almost self-effacing local man, appointed only three years earlier, had just turned thirty. The Moulin Blanc murder was his first big criminal case, but he was well aware of the unusual nature of it. He knew that Aline Pérès’s murderer was no ordinary killer. He greeted me with an affable smile as I entered the long, narrow space of his dingy little office.

  ‘I have come to ask you for authorisation to contact other criminal investigation units,’ I said. ‘Since his arrest, Francis Heaulme has caught the attention of a number of investigators and they would like to interview him.’

  ‘There’s no problem,’ he replied. ‘Come this afternoon at 2 p.m. if you like. I’m drafting his personal history. Only, you’re going to have to wait.’

  I agreed.

  2 p.m. At the Law Courts, Francis Heaulme was brought in by two officers. As he was about to go into the judge’s chamber, he spotted me in the corridor and shot me a little smile. I tagged on behind the escort. Heaulme and his lawyer took their places facing the magistrate. An officer removed the accused’s handcuffs and joined me by the door where I was sitting.

  Francis did not take much notice of his counsel. He knew that the charges would not be brought up. According to procedure, this was just a matter of summing up his itinerary and recording the names of all those he wished to call as witnesses, in particular character witnesses. Covering his private life, family, social, school and work life etc., the personal history is meant to reflect a person’s character. It is also a vital stage; through his choices and omissions, the criminal’s true and false faces emerge.

  After reminding him of the object of the cross-examination, the judge invited him to describe the stages
of his life. Francis Heaulme enjoyed this part. He liked being the centre of attention. He began his story in his stilted voice, his eyes boring into the magistrate’s:

  ‘My father used to beat my mother all the time. I would step in between them to stop him hitting her. My father told me it was my fault my mother died…I got on very well with her. But my father used to beat me. Once, when I was eighteen, I was very frightened. He took me down to the cellar and hit me with his belt on the left shoulder because he wanted to beat my mother and I’d interfered. He collected military weapons, and I’d picked up a bayonet from a case hanging on the wall, and told him to stop …’

  I recalled our first meeting. Then too, he had talked of violence, war and trauma. Was it all true, or was this some new fabrication? Whichever it was, when he spoke about his father, he seemed on the point of exploding. His tone was furious and his words rapped out like lashes of a whip. He went on:

  ‘Life at home was very hard. My mother was very unhappy with my father, and so was my sister. We weren’t allowed to do anything, we couldn’t go out. My mother didn’t want us to hang around with the local kids because there were a lot of delinquents in the area … When my father turned round and said it was my fault my mother was dead, I tried to commit suicide by stabbing myself in the stomach with a broken bottle. After that, my father put me in the cellar. He tied up my hands and beat me. That’s when I was sent to the psychiatric hospital in Jury-lès-Metz for three months. I left home eight years ago. I haven’t seen my father since, and I don’t want to see him again.’

  A grisly story, and I didn’t know what to think of it. I hadn’t imagined Heaulme as an abused child. Could this explain his impulses to kill? But was he telling us the truth? If not, when had he lied? Everything would have to be checked. Find his father, his sister, their neighbours at the time, the psychiatrists …

  The purpose of the personal history is above all to encourage the accused to talk about himself. The less the judge intervenes, the better. The magistrate steered Francis Heaulme onto the subject of his schooling and work life.

  ‘I often missed school because I was ill a lot. Very highly strung. I had to repeat the year several times in primary school. I don’t remember the names of my teachers. I remember more about when I went to the Briey special school. I was sixteen. I trained to be an electrician, and I qualified. My father had told me that if I failed, I’d be sent to reform school in Château-Saint-Louis. But I didn’t end up there because I passed my exams. At school, if anybody picked a fight with me, I gave them what for. I had quite a few warnings. I was often called up before the head. I was suspended sometimes. I didn’t learn anything. When I was at Briey, I had an argument with the cook over a piece of chicken. I wanted to take the biggest bit. The cook didn’t like that and we got into a fight.’

  He was giving us his version of events, making up a qualification, and displaying the aggressiveness that seemed to have dogged him throughout his life. It was always somebody else’s fault, mainly his father’s. How long had he been this dangerous? We would have to trace the primary and secondary school teachers, and the employers, who had known him well.

  Francis Heaulme was now very relaxed. He continued his story with complete detachment.

  ‘At nineteen, I began to work with my father as an electrician for temp agencies in the Metz region. I was paid, but it was my father who pocketed the money. At twenty-one, I worked for the civil engineering firm Metz-Lorraine Travaux Publics. It’s still going … I worked with a very nice site manager … I used to go hunting with him on Sundays. I didn’t shoot, because I don’t like that. I was the tracker. We hunted boar and roebuck. I remember that time very clearly and I have happy memories of it. I stayed with that firm for five or six years, but I was sacked because of alcohol. I didn’t get on with the foreigners who worked with me.’

  Francis Heaulme reeled off his story as if it were a recitation, the words chosen with care. Even when he had to talk about himself, he gave nothing away. Too much coherence in an account where everything tied up neatly…and a wealth of detail – places, dates and people. In this respect, Heaulme had an outstanding memory…I was now convinced that he was testing us.

  ‘I lost my job and my mother almost at the same time, and that broke me. I ended up at the psychiatric centre in Jury-lès-Metz … I wandered from Emmaüs community to Emmaüs community to find my niche. I still haven’t found it … I stayed at various different Emmaüs communities all over France. Metz, Haguenau, Dunkerque, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Caen, Cherbourg, Brest, La-Roche-sur-Yon, Rochefort, Nice, Bayonne, Montpellier, Pau, then I came back up to Bischwiller … I only stayed two weeks at the community in Brest because of the discipline, it was like being in the army. I kept myself to myself, I didn’t hang around with just anybody.’

  After a few moments’ silence, he added, suddenly agitated, ‘I don’t want to hear any more about the Emmaüs communities. I won’t talk about the past any more!’

  Heaulme clammed up. Possibly a new lead, but for the magistrate, this was not the moment to try and establish the truth. He was simply recording Heaulme’s version of events. Impassive, he signalled to his clerk to start a new paragraph concerning Heaulme’s military service.

  ‘I was declared unfit for service because of my eyesight. I don’t like uniforms. I was glad to be declared unfit because I don’t like the army. I had enough discipline with my father, thank you.’

  ‘Fine! What about your love life?’

  ‘I’ve known girls, but it didn’t work out because of my personality. I’ve got a foul personality. I’m stubborn. I’m very shy and sentimental. I can’t remember the names of the women I’ve known. I was more involved with my work than with women. At weekends, I’d go to bars and meet women, but not prostitutes. More like women aged twenty-five to thirty-five, married or single, but I didn’t go very far, I just chatted them up.’

  Before Francis Heaulme’s arrest, his girlfriend had described their meeting as a gift from God. ‘The Almighty placed him on my path. I was cycling past where Francis was working as a labourer.’ Afterwards, according to her, they were inseparable. With hindsight, I shuddered at the extreme vulnerability of this woman. Her blind trust could have proved fatal. Paradoxically, perhaps it protected her.

  Francis had his own version of their relationship. ‘I was never violent with her. Sometimes I shouted when we argued. I would go out to prevent things getting out of hand. With her, I feel happy. All alone, I can’t cope.’

  He had indeed settled down, but I was convinced that he was making up his sexuality. For what purpose? There was a sexual element in his attacks, but I couldn’t yet put my finger on it.

  ‘Tell me about your health, then your tangles with the law’, the judge went on.

  ‘I’ve never had a serious illness or operation. It was after my mother’s death that I began to have a serious alcohol problem. I drank mainly beer and whisky, sometimes I mixed the two. I used to drink five to twelve litres a day. I saw military uniforms in my mind. I often ended up in psychiatric centres because of the drinking. When I’d had enough, I’d leave without any explanation. When I drink, I don’t know where I am any more. I fall over. When I drink, I’m lost and I call my mother … One of the doctors who looked after me told me that if I carried on drinking, things would end badly for me. I might finish up in hospital. I admit I used to be an alcoholic, but I’m not any more. I’ve completely changed my personality … Around August or September 1989, I was sentenced by the Montluçon court to forty-five days in jail for mugging an elderly person. I stole 50 francs and I turned myself in to the police. I was released at the end of September. I spent a week in a hostel in Montluçon, but I don’t remember which one. Then I had a train ticket to go home to Metz. In July 1989 I went to the gendarmerie in Com-piègne- lès-Arcs to report that I’d been run over by a car, but it wasn’t true. I never found out what the verdict was.’

  Once again, he was on his guard. Both in Brest and Avignon, Heaulme had
been hospitalised just before a murder. He was a regular patient. He knew exactly how medical establishments worked. He would always volunteer to lend a hand and do odd jobs, and was easily accepted by the nursing staff, who looked on his ‘respite cure’ with a charitable eye. It was a made-to-measure alibi.

  Changing the subject, the judge asked about his leisure activities.

  ‘I used to like getting on my bike and going for a ride. On Sunday evenings I’d go and see some friends at Bischwiller church. I don’t know their names, but we got friendly … We talked about God and about everything. I’m very religious, I say my prayers every night. I went swimming in Haguenau … I used to spend a lot of my time at work.’

  Lastly, the magistrate asked him the names of the people he could call on as character witnesses.

  ‘I think the people from the nursing home at Château-Walck could talk about me … They’re friends. I can’t think of anyone else who might talk about me other than those I’ve mentioned.’

  ‘Fine, excellent … I don’t have any more questions. Is there anything you would like to add?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  Francis Heaulme smiled. He was like someone who had just taken an oral exam and was pleased with his performance. He had given his version of his past. A ‘clean’ past with the worst parts airbrushed out. The presentable story that he wanted the judge to accept. But he had taken the precaution of slipping in a few extenuating circumstances: a violent father, an unhappy childhood, alcohol … But not a word about his victims, not a hint of remorse. He had been perfectly in command, from beginning to end of the hearing. It was an impressive display of self-control.

  The judge reread the interview out loud, then they both signed the statement. The session was over. The judge ordered the defendant to be taken back to his cell.