Patrice Alègre Sentenced to Life for Murdering Five Young Women Around Toulouse
A Toulouse jury took less than two hours to impose the maximum sentence on the former nightclub doorman, two of whose killings had first been written off as suicides.
Published
For years, police treated two of Patrice Alègre's killings as suicides. On February 21, 2002, a Toulouse jury sentenced him to life in prison for murdering five young women.
After nine days of hearings, the Haute-Garonne assize court deliberated for less than two hours before imposing life with a minimum of 22 years, the maximum the law allowed and the sentence the prosecutor, Marc Gaubert, had requested. Alègre, 33, a former nightclub doorman in Toulouse, had been tried for five murders, six rapes and an attempted murder of young women in 1989, 1990 and 1997, and he had admitted the crimes. Neither he nor the victims' families reacted when the verdict was read.
The women he killed were Valérie Tariote, 21, a waitress at a café by Toulouse's Matabiau station, in February 1989; Laure Martinet, 19, a student found in a ditch at Bonrepos-Riquet in January 1990; Martine Matias, 29, a secretary, in her Toulouse apartment in February 1997; Mireille Normand, 35, at Verdun, in the Ariège, in June 1997; and Isabelle Chichérie, 29, in her Paris apartment in September 1997. A sixth woman survived his attack. The deaths of Tariote and Matias had been classed by police as suicides. Alègre attacked women he knew, and he told psychiatrists that refusal was what drove him to act.
He was arrested on September 5, 1997, at Châtenay-Malabry, outside Paris, the day after Chichérie was killed. Three months later, passing near the Matabiau station with gendarmes, he told them that a woman named Valérie had died there, and his first killing was finally solved. At the time of the trial he was also under formal investigation for two other murders and a rape, and gendarmes suspected him in four other unexplained deaths in the Haute-Garonne.
The families called the verdict expected and deserved, but some said it brought no peace. Martine Matias's brother said he was disappointed and bitter.
French newspapers spelled two of the victims' surnames in more than one way, Tariote or Tariotte and Chichérie or Chicherie.
Sources
- Patrice Alègre condamné à la réclusion criminelle à perpétuité : pour les familles, un verdict "normal et mérité", La Dépêche du Midi
- Alègre violait, torturait et étranglait ses victimes, Le Parisien
- Le calvaire des victimes, La Dépêche du Midi