Francis Heaulme was arrested in Bischwiller, in Alsace, on January 7, 1992, and has been held ever since. By June 2026 he was serving sentences for 11 murders committed between 1984 and 1992, according to reports by Sud Radio and by AFP as printed by the Swiss outlet blue News. The French press called him the "routard du crime", the drifter of crime, because the killings followed his wanderings: from 1984 he moved through 37 French departments.
Nine of those murders were tried before 2017. Two of the cases brought life sentences, one for the murder of a teenage girl and one for the murder of a nine-year-old child, Tendance Ouest reported, carrying AFP's coverage of his 2017 trial. In two other cases he was acquitted once and had the charges dismissed once. The last two murders on his record are the ones he has always denied: the killings of two eight-year-old boys, Cyril Beining and Alexandre Beckrich, in Montigny-lès-Metz, near Metz, on September 28, 1986. A teenager had been convicted of those killings in 1989 and cleared in 2002. Heaulme was convicted of them in 2017, the conviction was upheld on appeal in 2018, and it became final in June 2020.
In June 2026 an investigating judge sent him to trial for one more killing, that of Jean-Joseph Clément, 60, at Bédarrides in the Vaucluse in August 1989. In that case he is accused only. He was 67, held at the Ensisheim prison in the Haut-Rhin, and had spent time in a secure hospital unit in Nancy that spring.
Little is known about his early life. He grew up in Meurthe-et-Moselle, in Lorraine, blue News reported in 2026, citing AFP. His sister testified at the Montigny trial in Metz in May 2017; Tendance Ouest reported that he was moved to tears while she spoke and that the two remained very close. When the presiding judge at that trial asked about his childhood and his first killing, he answered some questions and refused others.
From 1984 he traveled through 37 departments of France, according to AFP. In August 1989, the month Jean-Joseph Clément was killed at Bédarrides, he was living at an Emmaüs community, a speaker quoted by Sud Radio said in 2026. He spoke at his 2017 trial of problems with alcohol, Tendance Ouest reported.
Several of the earlier victims were named at the 2017 trial in Metz, where the presiding judge pressed Heaulme for hours about why he had killed. According to Tendance Ouest's account of that hearing on May 9, 2017, the judge went through other victims in his history: Annick Maurice, 26, who had been on her way to work; Lyonelle Gineste; Joris Viville; and two elderly women. The judge pointed to features that recurred from case to case: disordered scenes, isolated places, and the fact that Heaulme went to a hospital emergency department after each one. Heaulme said he could not explain. "Je ne peux pas vous dire, je sais pas," he told the court, I can't tell you, I don't know.
Aline Pérès, 49, was killed at Brest in 1989. Her death brought the gendarme Jean-François Abgrall into the case and began the search that ended with Heaulme's arrest in 1992 (Tendance Ouest; Lyon Capitale). Lyon Capitale reported in 2014 that Abgrall had obtained confessions from Heaulme in other cases, including that one.
Jean Rémy, a man in his sixties, was killed in 1992. Heaulme was sentenced in 1999 to 15 years of criminal imprisonment for his murder, Tendance Ouest reported in May 2017. When that case came up at the Montigny trial, Heaulme protested that he was being smeared: "Vous me salissez, vous me salissez," Sud Radio reported.
By the time the Montigny case reached court, the record stood at nine murder convictions and two life sentences.
Jean-François Abgrall was a gendarme in the research section at Rennes when he was called in on the killing of Aline Pérès in 1989, Tendance Ouest reported when he testified in Metz on May 9, 2017. By then he had left the gendarmerie and worked as a private detective. He wrote a book about the case, Dans la tête du tueur (Inside the Killer's Head).
In 1992, at the jail in Brest, Heaulme talked to him about "pépins", snags or mishaps. Abgrall understood that he was talking about a killing. He described a pattern in the way Heaulme spoke about crimes: Heaulme put another man in the story, cast himself as a bystander who arrived just after or met the killer, and drew the places precisely. He was almost always admitted to a hospital within hours of a killing. Abgrall compared Heaulme's accounts with unsolved murders across France, and the work helped place Heaulme at several scenes, according to the same report. In court in May 2017 Abgrall repeated that Heaulme tended to add another man to his accounts and to place himself as a spectator, Tendance Ouest reported on May 15, 2017.
A former investigating judge, Denis Vanbremeersch, told the 2017 trial that Heaulme had admitted two or three murders tied to Abgrall's work, and that Heaulme might say different things to please someone he trusted. Heaulme, for his part, accused Abgrall in court of trying to incriminate him further.
Abgrall was the officer who arrested Heaulme in 1992, Tendance Ouest reported. AFP gives the date and place as January 7, 1992, at Bischwiller in the Bas-Rhin.
Cyril Beining and Alexandre Beckrich were eight years old and friends. On the late afternoon of Sunday, September 28, 1986, they went out on their bicycles in Montigny-lès-Metz, on the outskirts of Metz, Lyon Capitale reported. They were found dead that evening, AFP reported in an account carried by Tendance Ouest. They had been killed with stones.
The police investigation that followed was later heavily criticized. Four people confessed to the killings at one point or another, Tendance Ouest reported in 2017. A warehouse worker, H. L., who worked near the scene, confessed twice in 1986 and retracted; investigators judged the confessions not credible (Lyon Capitale). A 19-year-old's confession was dismissed as fanciful, Lyon Capitale reported.
In 1987 a 16-year-old apprentice cook, P. D., confessed in police custody (Sud Radio), repeated the confession several times and then retracted it for good. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1989, the first minor in France to receive that sentence, Tendance Ouest reported. He was convicted twice. A review procedure led to a third trial, and in 2002 the Rhône assize court in Lyon acquitted him. He had spent 15 years in prison. What weighed most in his acquittal was evidence that Heaulme had been in Montigny-lès-Metz, near the scene, on the day of the killings (Tendance Ouest; Lyon Capitale).
Abgrall had not had Montigny on his lists. In 1997, a letter from P. D.'s lawyer saying that his client was innocent led him back to the case, Tendance Ouest reported. He remembered an account Heaulme had given him in June 1992: Heaulme said he had been cycling in the east of France, two boys had thrown stones at him, he had ridden off, and when he came back they were dead and a fire truck was there. "C'était dans l'Est," it was in the east, Heaulme had said. The defense later argued that Heaulme's story was set down in a formal statement only five years after the conversation and was therefore weak.
Other evidence came later. In July 2001, two fishermen who knew Heaulme slightly said that on the evening of September 28, 1986 they had picked him up a few kilometers from the scene with blood on his face (Lyon Capitale; Tendance Ouest). At the 2002 Lyon trial, where he appeared as a witness, Heaulme denied killing the children, Lyon Capitale reported.
The physical exhibits from 1986 were gone by then. They had been destroyed lawfully in 1995, at a time when the authorities believed the culprit was already in prison, according to AFP reports carried by Europe 1 and Tendance Ouest. Lyon Capitale wrote in 2014 that some of the destroyed items might have allowed DNA testing.
A new investigation opened in 2002 was led by Colonel Laurent Iltis, who later testified that he had found no material evidence, but that Heaulme's record made his presence at the scene a legitimate question (Tendance Ouest, May 15, 2017). In a gendarmerie interview in 2006, Heaulme said he had gone up to the scene to chase a man and had seen the two boys' bodies, while still denying that he killed them.
He was placed under formal investigation in 2006, Tendance Ouest and Lyon Capitale reported. In 2007 the case against him was dismissed. Cyril's mother appealed that dismissal, and her appeal led in time to the trial, Europe 1 reported in 2020. Two further rounds of investigation were ordered. In 2013 he was sent to the Moselle assize court, and in June 2013 the Cour de cassation upheld that referral, Lyon Capitale reported. A letter Heaulme wrote in 2005, read at his 2017 trial, said that he was "tranquille", unworried, about Montigny because no one had seen him do it; Tendance Ouest called it the closest thing to a confession heard at that trial.
The first Heaulme trial for the Montigny killings opened before the Moselle assize court in Metz at the end of March 2014. Heaulme, gray-haired, took back his longtime lawyer, Liliane Glock, who told the court he was extremely tired, and for the first time he refused to be photographed or filmed in the dock, Lyon Capitale reported.
New testimony about H. L. arrived just before and during the opening days. A woman wrote that he had confided in her; a former railway worker said he had seen a man running along the line in 1986 in a red and white shirt. On April 1, 2014, at the request of the advocate general, who said the new accounts suggested serious and corroborating evidence against H. L., the presiding judge, Gabriel Steffanus, adjourned the trial. "L'entière vérité est à ce prix," he said, the whole truth comes at this price. All parties agreed. Cyril's father, speaking publicly for the first time, said he was disappointed and wondered whether he would live to learn the truth, Lyon Capitale reported.
A new judicial investigation of H. L. followed. The courts found the evidence against him insufficient, and on January 10, 2017 the Cour de cassation made his clearance final (Tendance Ouest). Heaulme would be tried alone.
The second trial opened before the Moselle assize court in Metz on April 25, 2017, and was set to run to May 18, with about 100 witnesses. Three rooms of the Metz courthouse were taken over for it and about 100 journalists were accredited, Tendance Ouest reported. Heaulme, then 58, looked visibly aged and had trouble speaking when he gave his identity, Sud Radio reported. Glock told the court the trial could no longer be fair, pointing to the evidence destroyed in 1995, and asked for his immediate acquittal; the request was refused.
As the presiding judge read out the summary of the case, Heaulme stood up. "J'ai commis des meurtres, mais Montigny, ce n'est pas moi," he said: I have committed murders, but Montigny wasn't me (Sud Radio; Europe 1). Over the years he had given contradictory versions, Sud Radio noted. In one he had said he invented everything so that people would leave him alone. In another: "Des fois, je mens, des fois, je dis la vérité," sometimes I lie, sometimes I tell the truth, adding that he had seen neither children nor a man and had said it to make himself interesting.
On the second day P. D. testified by video link from Bordeaux, where he lived, and was questioned for more than three hours. Some of the civil parties remained convinced of his guilt, and the defense used his testimony to try to raise doubt; at one point he protested that his own trial was being held again, Sud Radio reported.
Over the following weeks the jury heard former cellmates who said Heaulme had confided in them about the killings, one of whom urged him in court to confess because he had nothing left to lose; the fishermen; Colonel Iltis; Abgrall; and Inspector Varlet, who had led the original police inquiry and grew irritated when pressed about missing parts of the file (Tendance Ouest, May 15, 2017). The families were divided. A lawyer for Alexandre's grandmother said he expected nothing from the trial unless Heaulme confessed. Heaulme kept repeating "Montigny, c'est pas moi" and "Y'a rien contre moi," there is nothing against me.
On May 17, 2017, Advocate General Jean-Marie Beney and Deputy Prosecutor Brigitte Harmand-Colette asked for life imprisonment. Beney asked the jurors not to be swayed by the absence of a confession, and pointed instead to Heaulme's admission that he had been at the scene, the similarities with his other crimes, and his personality, Tendance Ouest reported. The same day the court found Heaulme guilty of both murders and sentenced him to life imprisonment (réclusion criminelle à perpétuité). He appealed at once.
The appeal opened before the Yvelines assize court in Versailles on December 4, 2018, the sixth trial in the case: three for P. D., two earlier ones for Heaulme, and this one. It was planned for 14 days with 81 witnesses, Tendance Ouest reported. Heaulme was 59.
Glock again asked for an acquittal at the outset, arguing that the trial could no longer be fair, that Heaulme had been under suspicion for some 20 years without a final judgment, that the 2002 Lyon retrial had in effect been a trial of Heaulme, and that P. D. should appear in person rather than by video. The court deliberated for 45 minutes and rejected the requests. Another of Heaulme's lawyers, Alexandre Bouthier, argued that P. D.'s acquittal recognized a doubt rather than proving innocence, and that the same doubt should benefit Heaulme.
The prosecution relied on three things: Heaulme's presence at the scene, the accounts of two former cellmates, and the similarities with four of his other murders, which it called close to a criminal signature. The civil parties split. A lawyer for the Beckrich family said the family did not believe Heaulme was guilty and would not argue the prosecution's case. Dominique Boh-Petit, for Cyril's mother, argued that he was guilty, and was credited with keeping the case alive along with her client (Tendance Ouest, December 4, 2018).
On December 20, Advocate General Guirec Le Bras asked again for a life sentence. "S'ils sont morts c'est qu'ils ont croisé celui qu'il ne fallait pas," he said: if they died, it is because they crossed the wrong man's path. His colleague Olivier Mesrine acknowledged that prosecutors had argued two different theories against two different people for the same crimes, and that the justice system had gone astray, but said Heaulme was now the only person who should be tried. In December 2018 the court upheld the life sentence, his third.
In June 2020 the Cour de cassation rejected Heaulme's appeal, making the Montigny conviction final, Europe 1 reported with AFP. He was 61 and held at the Ensisheim prison in Alsace. Glock called it "évidemment, c'est une déception," a disappointment, and said she was considering an application to the European Court of Human Rights. Cyril's mother did not live to see the end of the case; she died in October 2019, aged 75, Europe 1 reported. Her lawyer called the ruling a full stop that did some moral good.
Jean-Joseph Clément, 60, a repairer of farm machinery, was found dead at Bédarrides, near Avignon, on August 8, 1989 (Sud Radio; blue News/AFP). Heaulme was first placed under investigation for his killing in 1992. He confessed and then retracted, Sud Radio reported. A judge in Reims dismissed the case in 2002.
The investigation was reopened in July 2023 on new evidence, and he was placed under formal investigation again in October 2023. In February 2024 the Reims court passed the file to the cold-case unit of the Nanterre court, and in February 2025 he was taken from Ensisheim to be questioned (blue News/AFP; Sud Radio). A speaker quoted by Sud Radio said the case had been reopened because of advances in science and because of Heaulme's criminal history, and that Heaulme had been stopped by gendarmes in the area at the time.
On June 16, 2026, at the prosecution's request, an investigating judge of the Nanterre cold-case unit ordered him to stand trial before an assize court. AFP, as printed by blue News, named the Hauts-de-Seine assize court; Sud Radio named the Vaucluse assize court. His lawyer could still appeal the referral. Didier Seban, the lawyer for Clément's daughter, greeted the decision with "Enfin un procès!", at last a trial. He said she had promised at her father's grave that she would find his killer, and that the family wanted the authorities to face past failures in the case, including destroyed exhibits and years without work on the file. Heaulme's lawyer and the Nanterre prosecutor did not answer AFP's requests for comment.
Heaulme has been in custody since January 1992. In June 2020 and again in June 2026 he was reported to be held at the maison centrale of Ensisheim, in the Haut-Rhin. In early April 2026 he was taken to hospital in Nancy, to the secure interregional unit for prisoners from eastern France, Sud Radio and blue News reported in June 2026; the prosecutor's office gave no details about his health.
Montigny-lès-Metz. Heaulme has denied the Montigny killings from the start and still does. No material evidence survived the 1995 destruction of exhibits, and he did not confess. Two juries convicted him on circumstantial evidence: his admitted presence at the scene, the fishermen's account, cellmates' testimony, his 2005 letter and the resemblance to his other killings. Part of Alexandre's family said in 2018 that it did not believe he was guilty, and some civil parties in 2017 still believed in P. D.'s guilt, which the courts rejected with his acquittal in 2002.
The Bédarrides case. Heaulme is accused of the killing of Jean-Joseph Clément and has not been tried. He confessed to it in 1992 and withdrew the confession, and the case was dismissed once, in 2002.
Other killings. In two other cases tried or investigated before 2017, he was acquitted once and had the charges dismissed once, according to AFP's 2017 coverage. Which cases they were has not been reported, and in law they are not his crimes.
1984: Heaulme begins the travels that take him through 37 French departments; the span of his 11 murder convictions starts this year.
September 28, 1986: Cyril Beining and Alexandre Beckrich, both 8, are killed in Montigny-lès-Metz.
1987: a 16-year-old, P. D., confesses in police custody and later retracts.
1989: P. D. is sentenced to life imprisonment for the Montigny killings.
1989: Aline Pérès, 49, is killed at Brest; the gendarme Jean-François Abgrall is called in.
August 8, 1989: Jean-Joseph Clément, 60, is found dead at Bédarrides, Vaucluse.
January 7, 1992: Heaulme is arrested at Bischwiller, Bas-Rhin.
1992: in Brest, Heaulme talks to Abgrall of "pépins"; in June he describes boys throwing stones at him in the east of France. He is placed under investigation over the Bédarrides killing, confesses and retracts.
1995: the Montigny exhibits are destroyed.
1997: a letter from P. D.'s lawyer leads Abgrall back to the Montigny case.
1999: Heaulme is sentenced to 15 years of criminal imprisonment for the murder of Jean Rémy.
July 2001: two fishermen say they saw Heaulme with blood on his face near Montigny on the evening of the killings.
2002: the Rhône assize court in Lyon acquits P. D.; a new investigation is opened; a Reims judge dismisses the Bédarrides case.
2006: Heaulme is placed under formal investigation for the Montigny killings.
2007: the Montigny case against him is dismissed; Cyril's mother appeals.
June 2013: the Cour de cassation upholds his referral to the Moselle assize court.
March 31 to April 1, 2014: first Montigny trial opens in Metz and is adjourned after new testimony about another man.
January 10, 2017: the Cour de cassation makes that man's clearance final.
April 25, 2017: second trial opens in Metz.
May 17, 2017: the Moselle assize court convicts Heaulme of both murders and sentences him to life imprisonment.
December 4, 2018: appeal opens before the Yvelines assize court in Versailles.
December 2018: the appeal court upholds the life sentence, his third.
October 2019: Cyril's mother dies.
June 2020: the Cour de cassation rejects his appeal; the Montigny conviction is final.
July 2023: the Bédarrides investigation is reopened; in October 2023 he is placed under formal investigation again.
February 2024: the file passes from Reims to the Nanterre cold-case unit.
February 2025: he is taken from Ensisheim to be questioned.
Early April 2026: he is taken to the secure hospital unit for prisoners in Nancy.
June 16, 2026: a Nanterre investigating judge sends him to trial before an assize court for the murder of Jean-Joseph Clément.