Patrice Alègre was 29 when police caught him in September 1997, at the end of a seven-month flight that took him from Toulouse to Spain, Germany and Belgium and back to Paris. In February 2002 the Haute-Garonne assize court in Toulouse convicted him of raping and murdering five women between 1989 and 1997, and of raping and trying to kill a sixth woman, who survived. He was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 22 years before any release could be considered.
His name stayed in the French news long after the verdict. In 2003 he and two women made claims about secret parties attended by public figures in Toulouse, and the claims reached a former mayor of the city who then headed France's broadcasting regulator. The accusations fell apart under investigation, and the judge in charge dismissed them in 2005, but the episode became known in France as the "affaire Alègre."
Little is known of his life before 1997. The Local, an English-language news site in France, wrote in 2019 that he had lived in Toulouse and worked there as a handyman, a waiter and a barman at the city's railway station, where he met several of the women he later killed. The Washington Times, reporting from his trial, called him a former doorman with a history of drug abuse and violence.
He described a hard childhood. The Local reported that he spoke of a violent father who served in the CRS, France's riot police, and psychologists who examined him for the trial told the court that his father's regular violence had marked him as a child. His date of birth and his schooling have not been made public.
The court convicted him of five murders, each with rape. Infodujour.fr, which published a chronology of the case in 2019, gave the names, ages and dates of the five women.
Valérie Tariote, 21, was found dead in Toulouse on February 27, 1989. She was the first of the five.
Laure Martinet, 19, died in January 1990. Infodujour gives the date as January 25, 1990.
Martine Matias, 29, was killed in Toulouse on February 11, 1997.
Mireille Normand, 35, was killed on June 19, 1997, at Verdun-sur-Garonne.
Isabelle Chicherie, 31, was killed in Paris on September 4, 1997. The Local reported that his last victim was a woman he had met in Spain while on the run, and the Washington Times wrote that he spent two nights with his last victim before he killed her.
Beyond their names, ages and the dates they died, little has been made public about who these women were: their families, their work, their lives.
The case broke open in February 1997. A young woman met him in Toulouse and, after an evening out, he attacked her. According to the Washington Times account of her trial testimony, she talked him into letting her go, he drove her to a friend's home and apologized, and she then went to the police. Infodujour dates the attack to February 22, 1997. The court later convicted him of her rape and of attempted murder.
Once she had gone to the police, he fled. The Washington Times reported that he killed again while he was on the run. The Local described his route: months in Spain, Germany and Belgium, and then a return to Paris. Mireille Normand and Isabelle Chicherie died in those months, in June and September 1997.
Police caught him in Paris on September 5, 1997, the day after his last killing. The Local noted that the arrest drew little international attention, because Diana, Princess of Wales, had died six days earlier.
He confessed. The Washington Times reported that he admitted the attacks after his arrest, and The Local wrote that he went on to confess to two more murders, with police describing him as cooperative and "friendly." Slate.fr, in a later account of the case, wrote that he admitted five murders, one attempted murder and six rapes, and that he was also charged with four other murders.
The Local reported that Toulouse police later reopened old investigations, exhumed several bodies and linked him to three more deaths. None of those deaths was among the crimes tried in 2002.
The trial opened in Toulouse in February 2002 and lasted about ten days. Infodujour gives the dates as February 11 to February 21, 2002. Alègre, then 33, sat between police officers wearing a bulletproof vest, the Washington Times reported, nearly without expression apart from facial tics and the clasping and unclasping of his hands.
Families of the women asked him to explain what he had done. He would not. His daughter wrote him a letter urging him to speak. In court he mostly answered "I don't know" or "I don't remember." Of his last victim he said, "I wasn't in control of myself." Before the verdict he asked his lawyer to hand six private letters to the families.
The prosecutor, Marc Gaubert, told the jury the crimes were premeditated and that Alègre had robbed the women. He called him "a perverse psychopath" and "a bad man." The psychiatrist Daniel Zagury testified that Alègre had built a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" persona to shield himself from what he had done. Psychologists said he showed little sign of facing his crimes and was likely to rape and kill again if he were freed.
His defense lawyer was Pierre Alfort. Infodujour reported that Alfort, with a second lawyer, Laurent Boguet, defended him at the trial, and that in June 2003 the two were replaced by Gilbert Collard and Edouard Martial.
The jury found him guilty of all the charges. The Washington Times reported that he was convicted of raping and murdering five women and of raping a sixth, and that he was sentenced to life imprisonment, with the court recommending at least 22 years before any release. Infodujour describes the minimum as a 22-year peine de sûreté, the French term for a period during which no release or reduction of sentence is allowed.
Reports differ on the date. Infodujour and Slate.fr give February 22, 2002, while Infodujour also places the end of the trial on February 21. No appeal has been reported.
The convictions did not close the files on other deaths in the Toulouse area. In June 2000, Slate.fr reported, the gendarmerie set up a unit called Homicide 31 to go back over old cases that might be linked to him. One was the death of Line Galbardi, 28, who was found dead in Toulouse on January 3, 1992. She had died of asphyxiation, and the case had been closed without a result.
Infodujour's chronology lists other deaths from 1992 that came up in the later investigations, among them those of Patricia Gélis, who disappeared that year, Josette Legoy, Josette Poiroux and Claude Martinez, as well as Line Galbardi. It reports that he received dismissals (non-lieu) in several of these cases, five murder cases in all. None of these deaths has been found by a court to be his.
The Galbardi file gave rise to the scandal. In January 2003, according to Slate.fr, two women who had known Line Galbardi told investigators that they had seen her killed. Their accounts grew. Infodujour reported that they alleged he had enjoyed protection from police and judicial officials, and that he had supplied women and drugs for sadomasochistic parties attended by public figures.
Dominique Baudis, a former mayor of Toulouse and former member of the National Assembly who in 2003 was president of the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA), the national broadcasting regulator, was among those named, along with a former Toulouse prosecutor. One of the women accused Baudis of rape. On May 18, 2003, Baudis went on national television news to say he would confront what he called slander and that he had never known Alègre. He said he believed the pornography industry, which he had opposed through a campaign at the regulator against pornography on television, was behind the claims.
On May 22, 2003, a 23-year-old man appeared on television claiming to have attended the parties. Slate.fr reported that he was later taken into custody and admitted he had invented the story under pressure from the two women.
Alègre joined in from prison. On May 30, 2003, according to Slate.fr, he backed the women's accounts and claimed the killing of Line Galbardi, and also the killing of Claude Martinez, which he said Baudis and the former prosecutor had ordered. On June 1, 2003, the television presenter Karl Zéro read extracts from a letter by Alègre on the Canal+ program "Le Vrai Journal." Within weeks he withdrew his statements. Infodujour reported that on June 26, 2003, he retracted, saying his confessions had been coerced and financially negotiated, and Slate.fr wrote that he cleared Baudis.
The rest of the accusations came apart in the same way. One of the women was charged with complicity in false accusation, Infodujour reported. The other told the judge in September 2003 that she had never met Baudis and had been pressured, and Infodujour wrote that she apologized to him on September 17, 2003. The young man who had appeared on television was charged with false accusation and died by suicide on September 21, 2003. Another man placed under investigation in June 2003 was cleared when DNA evidence matched neither him nor Alègre. The former prosecutor was released without charge.
Baudis's wife used his 1990 diary to show that on the date of one of the alleged incidents he had been at the National Assembly in Paris, Slate.fr reported. In January 2005 the investigating judge, Judge Perriquet, closed the file, and in March 2005 a dismissal cleared Baudis. He published a book about the affair, "Face à la calomnie," in January 2005. He died of cancer on April 10, 2014.
None of the accusations against public figures in Toulouse was proven, and no court found that the parties described by the women took place.
In prison he began writing to a Canadian woman, The Local reported in 2019, and she became his partner. Infodujour described her as a psychologist who had recently settled in France and wrote that he planned to marry her.
In September 2019 he was held at the prison in Moulins, in the Allier department. The 22-year minimum term was ending, and his lawyer, Pierre Alfort, was preparing an application for conditional release. Alfort told The Local that applying was his client's legal right and that psychiatrists would assess whether release was justified, with the decision resting with the court that oversees the enforcement of sentences. Infodujour reported that the victims' families' association Stop à l'oubli was expected to oppose his release. The outcome of the application has not been reported.
February 27, 1989: Valérie Tariote, 21, is found dead in Toulouse.
January 1990: Laure Martinet, 19, is killed.
January 3, 1992: Line Galbardi, 28, is found dead in Toulouse; the case is closed without a result.
February 11, 1997: Martine Matias, 29, is killed in Toulouse.
February 1997: A young woman he attacks survives, goes to the police, and he flees.
June 19, 1997: Mireille Normand, 35, is killed at Verdun-sur-Garonne.
September 4, 1997: Isabelle Chicherie, 31, is killed in Paris.
September 5, 1997: Alègre is arrested.
June 2000: The gendarmerie creates the Homicide 31 unit to reexamine old cases.
February 2002: Trial in Toulouse; convicted of five murders with rape and of rape and attempted murder; life with a 22-year minimum term.
January 2003: Two women tell investigators they saw Line Galbardi killed.
May 18, 2003: Dominique Baudis denies the accusations on national television.
May 30, 2003: Alègre backs the women's accounts and claims two killings.
June 1, 2003: Karl Zéro reads extracts of a letter by Alègre on Canal+.
June 26, 2003: Alègre retracts his statements.
September 2003: One of the women says she never met Baudis; the young man who appeared on television dies.
January to March 2005: The investigating judge closes the file; a dismissal clears Baudis.
April 10, 2014: Baudis dies.
September 2019: Held at Moulins; his lawyer prepares an application for conditional release.