On May 1, 1987, Swiss police arrested a 28-year-old soldier in the middle of his military service. His comrades knew Michel Peiry, a trained salesman from Romont in the canton of Fribourg, as a quiet man who was always polite, according to a 2026 account in the Swiss daily Blick. A few weeks earlier a 16-year-old hitchhiker had survived an attack and given investigators the information that led them to him.
In October 1989 the district court of Entremont, in the canton of Valais, sentenced Peiry to life imprisonment. He was convicted of four murders and two attempted murders, with other charges that included abduction, unlawful deprivation of liberty, coercion and theft. His victims were young hitchhikers, most of them teenagers. The Swiss press named him after his hometown, the Sadist of Romont, and the name has followed him for almost four decades.
The full number of his victims has never been settled in court. During the investigation he admitted killings in Switzerland and abroad, withdrew some of those admissions, and in at least one case confirmed again what he had withdrawn. In 2026 Blick reported that he had been linked to at least eleven killings in five countries, five of which were proven. He has applied twelve times for conditional release since 2002, and every application has been refused. In 2026 the Federal Supreme Court, the country's highest court, twice ruled against him: once on a request for accompanied outings, and once on parole.
Peiry was born in 1959 and grew up in Romont, a small town in the canton of Fribourg. Little about his early years has been reported. By his late twenties he had trained as a salesman. The Ticino news site Tio.ch, in a 2025 interview with a retired police officer who questioned him, described him as an ordinary man who passed almost unnoticed and who enjoyed caving.
He traveled widely in the early 1980s. Blick reported that he was in the United States in September 1981, and that his crimes later spread across France, Italy, Croatia and Switzerland. A psychiatric report concluded that his life had been shaped by suppressed homosexuality, Blick said.
Swiss press reports describe the same pattern in each case. Peiry drove the roads and picked up young hitchhikers, most of them adolescents. Keystone-ATS, the Swiss national news agency, has given the ages of his victims as 14 to 18; Blick gives a range of 14 to 24. He then took them to isolated places. The judgment of 1989, 20 Minuten reported in 2026, rested largely on several murders committed in especially vile circumstances.
Tio.ch, citing the retired Ticino officer Giorgio Galusero, reported that many of the young men he targeted were hitchhikers and that his car was the means by which he trapped them.
The earliest case attributed to Peiry happened outside Europe. According to Blick, during a trip to the United States in September 1981 he met a young Canadian man, who then disappeared. Peiry later confessed to killing him during an argument, withdrew the confession, and then confirmed it again. He used such reversals throughout his interrogations, Blick wrote, and the killing of the Canadian man was never conclusively proven. No charge in that case was reported.
Blick reported that Peiry was active in France in 1984 and 1985, and that two teenagers there were linked to him.
In May 1986, Blick reported, Peiry carried his crimes into Switzerland. A 14-year-old boy was killed in the canton of Valais, and his body was found in a remote mountain area near Albinen. Peiry was later convicted of his murder.
Ticino, the Italian-speaking canton in the south, also became part of the inquiry. A young man from Ticino was among the victims in 1986, according to Tio.ch, and the Ticino cantonal police joined the investigation led from French-speaking Switzerland.
After Peiry's arrest, Galusero and his colleague Alfredo Pronzini questioned him at length in Bellinzona, the capital of Ticino. In those sessions, the Swiss Italian broadcaster RSI reported in 2025, Peiry confessed to several killings, among them that of a young man he had picked up hitchhiking and who was killed in Cresciano, in Ticino. Whether that killing was one of the four murders for which he was convicted in Valais has not been reported.
Galusero, a former lieutenant of the Ticino cantonal police, told Tio.ch that in all those hours he never glimpsed a shred of humanity in the man. Speaking to RSI, he said that such revelations were hard to carry home to his own children. Blick quoted him as describing Peiry as a seemingly friendly man who was capable of unprecedented cruelty.
Between 1986 and 1987 Peiry was linked to six attacks in Croatia, Switzerland and Italy, Blick reported. Investigators began to notice him as he grew more reckless, and, in Blick's words, more careless. Two of the victims of attacks in Switzerland survived, barely.
The last attack attributed to him took place in April 1987. The victim, a 16-year-old, survived and gave investigators the crucial information that led to the arrest, according to Blick. Tio.ch reported that a composite picture of the suspect was published in newspapers, and that Peiry's own brother then went to the police to say that it might be him.
Peiry was arrested on May 1, 1987, while he was doing military service. Tio.ch said he was attending a military refresher course. Blick placed the arrest at a training site in Schangnau, in the canton of Bern. He has been in custody ever since, and he has never been granted a single day of leave, Keystone-ATS reported in 2026.
The admissions Peiry made in custody did not stay fixed. By the count Keystone-ATS gave in March 2026, he confessed to killing three teenagers in Switzerland and two more abroad, and during the investigation he retracted three other killings he had admitted. In August 2026, 20 Minuten put the number of teenagers he targeted at about ten, and said that the exact figure remains unclear because he sometimes confessed and then withdrew his confessions. Blick's figure, also from August 2026, was at least eleven killings in Switzerland, France, Italy, Croatia and the United States, five of them proven.
Only the court's findings are settled. He stands convicted of four murders and two attempted murders.
Peiry was tried in Valais, before the district court of Entremont. In October 1989 the court sentenced him to life imprisonment; Blick gives the date as October 31, 1989. According to swissinfo.ch, the verdict covered murder, attempted murder, theft, coercion, unlawful deprivation of liberty and abduction, with other charges. Blick gives the murder count as four and the attempted murder count as two.
Peiry applied for conditional release for the first time in 2002. The Valais commission responsible for conditional release turned him down, swissinfo.ch reported, relying on risk assessments by experts of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University of Geneva. The commission also ordered him to take an active part in psychotherapy for ten years before a new application would be considered.
His next application failed as well. In April 2009, swissinfo.ch reported that he would not be released early because the authorities still judged the risk that he would reoffend to be high. The decision could be appealed to the cantonal court and then to the Federal Supreme Court, the agency report noted. According to 20 Minuten, he did not challenge a parole refusal in court until 2025.
By 2026 he had filed twelve applications in all, according to 20 Minuten and Blick, and every one had been refused.
In 2023 Peiry asked to be allowed out of prison on accompanied outings. He pointed to his good conduct in prison and to the lack of any prospect for him without some easing of his detention, 20 Minuten reported. The prison refused, and so did the higher authorities; the last cantonal refusal came from the Valais cantonal court on April 25, 2025, according to Keystone-ATS.
He took the case to the Federal Supreme Court, arguing that the refusal breached the European Convention on Human Rights. He also proposed an outing under strict security, escorted by several guards or armed police officers along a set route.
The court rejected his appeal in a ruling published on March 11, 2026, in case 7B_518/2025. It found that the cantonal court had been right to rely on a psychiatric expert report that put the risk of reoffending at very high. The report found that the prison setting reduced the factors that could lead him to offend again, but that outside he would again be exposed to his urges without strategies to limit the risk. In therapy he had not worked through the patterns of behavior behind his crimes, and his declining health did not change the assessment.
The judges held that, even after more than 38 years of detention, refusing him an unaccompanied release did not breach the Convention, because the rights of others to their physical, psychological and sexual integrity took priority over his liberty. A prisoner serving life who poses such a risk has no right to reintegration until that risk has been sufficiently reduced, the court said. As for his proposal of a heavily guarded outing, the court found that it would take considerable police resources to prevent escape or a new offense, and that such an effort made no sense while there was no realistic prospect that he could live in freedom without committing crimes. He was 67 years old.
In 2025 the Valais cantonal court rejected another of his applications for conditional release. For the first time, Peiry challenged a parole refusal before the cantonal courts and then before the Federal Supreme Court, 20 Minuten reported.
The Federal Supreme Court dismissed his appeal in early August 2026, and the ruling was published on August 13, 2026. The court found that he still posed a very high risk of reoffending, especially against the life and the sexual integrity of minors. A life sentence does not violate the European Convention on Human Rights as long as it remains open to review, the court held, and that condition was met in his case. Nor, it said, was keeping him in detention for life for crimes of this kind inhuman or degrading treatment.
The judges set out what would have to change before any easing of his sentence could be considered. He would need to make progress in therapy in prison, come to understand what led him to his crimes, and develop strategies to reduce the danger he would present outside. Only after that, and after a new risk assessment, could relief be considered.
On August 18, 2026, Blick reported the ruling and noted that he had then been in prison for almost 40 years.
Peiry's case was one of two from the 1980s that Tio.ch linked in 2025 to the Swiss provisions on lifelong internment for extremely dangerous offenders. The other was that of Werner Ferrari. Galusero told Tio.ch he expected that Peiry would probably never leave prison.
The number of people he killed is not established. The court convicted him of four murders and two attempted murders. Keystone-ATS reported confessions to five killings, three in Switzerland and two abroad, and three more confessions withdrawn during the investigation. 20 Minuten wrote of about ten victims in August 2026; Blick wrote of links to at least eleven killings, of which five were proven.
The 1981 case of the Canadian man who disappeared in the United States rests on a confession that Peiry made, withdrew and repeated. It was not proven in court.
The two teenagers linked to him in France in 1984 and 1985, and the six attacks reported in Croatia, Switzerland and Italy between 1986 and 1987, are attributed to him in press accounts. Only the cases in his Swiss conviction were tried.
The killing in Cresciano, in Ticino, is one he confessed to under questioning in Bellinzona, according to RSI. Whether it formed part of his conviction has not been reported.
Accounts also differ on the age range of his victims (14 to 18 according to Keystone-ATS, 14 to 24 according to Blick).
1959: Michel Peiry is born; he grows up in Romont, canton of Fribourg.
September 1981: During a trip to the United States he meets a young Canadian man who then disappears; Peiry later confesses to killing him, withdraws the confession and confirms it again. The case is not proven.
1984 and 1985: Two teenagers in France are later linked to him in press reports.
May 1986: A 14-year-old boy is killed in Valais; his body is found near Albinen. Peiry is later convicted of his murder.
1986: A young man from Ticino is among the victims; Peiry later confesses to a killing in Cresciano.
1986 to 1987: Six attacks in Croatia, Switzerland and Italy are attributed to him; two victims of attacks in Switzerland survive.
April 1987: A 16-year-old survives the last attack attributed to him and gives investigators the information that leads to the arrest.
May 1, 1987: Peiry is arrested during military service.
October 1989 (October 31, according to Blick): The Entremont district court in Valais sentences him to life imprisonment for four murders and two attempted murders, with other charges.
2002: His first application for conditional release is refused by the Valais commission, which orders ten years of active psychotherapy before a new application.
April 2009: A further application for conditional release is refused.
2023: He asks for accompanied outings; the prison and the authorities refuse.
April 25, 2025: The Valais cantonal court upholds the refusal of outings.
2025: The Valais cantonal court rejects another application for conditional release.
March 11, 2026: The Federal Supreme Court publishes its ruling refusing accompanied outings (case 7B_518/2025).
August 13, 2026: The Federal Supreme Court publishes its ruling upholding the refusal of parole.
August 18, 2026: Blick reports that he remains in prison, almost 40 years after his arrest.