TESTIMONIAL: in La Grande-Motte, amazement of François Verove’s neighbors, the serial killer known as “le Grêlé” – France 3 Régions

It is therefore in the residential district of Goélands in La Grande-Motte, in the Hérault, that the “Grêlé” was hiding, this serial killer accused of 4 murders and 6 rapes, wanted for 35 years.
François Vérove lived in a vast white house, renovated, under the pines, with his wife and children. A seemingly uneventful neighbor.

A “happy” family man

In any case, this is what his neighbors thought, a retired couple settled a few meters from François Vérove for several years. Since the confirmation, Thursday, October 30 of the identity of the pockmarked thanks to the DNA taken from the body of Francois Verove, the couple cannot believe it.

“We were very, very distressed to learn that. It completely liquefied us. We never would have imagined such a thing. I especially pity his wife and his children. They should not know, it is not possible. They seemed cheerful, happy “ says the neighbor, curly black hair and shaking hand.

A retiree invested in the neighborhood

François Vérove, who committed suicide on Wednesday, September 29, in a rental apartment in Grau-du-Roi, in the Gard, is described as an active and very busy man. At 59, he was a former gendarme and former policeman. Retired, he had also been municipal councilor until last year in Prades-le-Lez, in the metropolis of Montpellier.

His neighbors remember a neighborhood meal he organized in 2018.

There were all the people from the neighborhood, for a meal with neighbors. It was very friendly. There was nothing to alarm us. It would have been necessary to be very perceptive. And even !

Murderous impulses

The man had suddenly disappeared from the family home. His body was found Wednesday, September 29, 2021 in a rental apartment in Grau-du-Roi. The autopsy confirmed the suicide hypothesis explained in his confession letter. A document in which he admits to being the so-called “pockmarked” nickname due to traces of acne on his face at the material time.

He admits to having committed murders and crimes but without giving the names of his victims. He claims to have acted under impulses which he explains by a difficult childhood. Demons appeased by her marriage and the birth of her children. According to this letter, it would have been “taken in hand” and would not have “nothing done since 1997”.

The oldest “cold case” in France

According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, the fifty-year-old was summoned on September 24, for a hearing on September 29, the day of his death. Indeed, in recent months, the oldest case in France, for acts committed between 1986 and 1994, was progressing.
Some 750 gendarmes stationed in the Paris region at the time of the events had been summoned in recent months. Fearing that his true identity would be revealed, the Haile therefore ended his life, to “protect his family” from the scandal.

Four murders and six rapes in 8 years

The “Grêlé” affair began on May 5, 1986, when the naked body covered in sperm of an 11-year-old schoolgirl, Cécile Bloch, was discovered in a hall of a building on rue Petit, located in the 19th arrondissement. from Paris.

The beginning of a sad series of miscellaneous facts: the criminal took the lives of Gilles Politi (38 years old) and Irmgard Mueller (20 years old) in 1987, before taking that of Karine Leroy (19 years old) in 1994. “The Hail ”was also guilty of 6 other rapes between 1986 and 1994.