Chilling moment brazen serial killer who raped victims as young as 11 appears on TV quiz show in middle of 30yr manhunt
THIS is the chilling moment a French serial killer who raped victims as young as 11 appeared on a national TV show while being hunted by the police.
The retired police officer took part in the French quiz show Tout le monde veut prendre sa place (Everyone Wants to Take His Place) in 2019 after being on a run for 30 years.
A relaxed François Vérove appeared comfortable as he chatted with popular French TV presenter Nagui Fam on the quiz show.
Footage shows the shameless butcher standing tall with no signs of apprehension as the presenter introduced him as “François from La Grande-Motte”.
During a light-hearted banter, Vérove spoke about his cop life – and explained how he was a constable before joining the mounted police force and then a motorcycle brigade in the ’80s.
He also revealed how he was briefly suspended over an incident that involved a prostitute – but was allowed to join back the force shortly by senior officers.
During the quiz round, Vérove failed to answer two general knowledge questions on the Olympics and tuberculosis vaccinations correctly and was thus eliminated from the game.
The chilling footage from the 2019 show was disclosed by Marianne, a news magazine who later revealed Vérove’s true identity.
His appearance on French national TV is seen as an indication that the serial killer, who was on a manhunt for 30 long years at that time, made no attempt to hide his identity.
Over the years, investigators came to believe that the suspect of the crimes may have been part of the gendarmerie – police who are in charge of internal security – and established a DNA profile of him.
Victims who survived their encounter with Vérove reported that he had shown his officer badge, identifying himself as a police officer.
In 1986, police published a police sketch based on witness statements that showed a man of around 25 years old, six feet tall with light-brown hair, and visible traces of acne on his face.
But cops were never able to catch the serial killer despite him hiding in plain sight.
However, Vérove sinister past only came to light after he killed himself in 2021, following which a police probe linked him back to 31 rapes and murders he committed in Paris in the ’80s and ’90s.
Vérove, then 59, left a suicide note in the flat where he took an overdose of medicines, telling his wife that he had “carried a mad rage that made of me a criminal”.
The note read: “There were times when I couldn’t stand it and I had to destroy, sully, kill someone innocent.”
Vérove also mentioned the “past impulses” in the letter – and admitted murders without detailing the victims or circumstances.
He wrote that he stopped committing those crimes in 1997.
A DNA sample taken from Vérove confirmed him to be the killer that police had sought since Cécile Bloch was dead in Paris in 1986.
Considered to be his most notorious case, he was suspected of raping and murdering the 11-year-old girl who was found dead in the basement of the building she lived.
Timeline of the crimes by François Vérove
1986 – On April 7, Vérove met an eight-year-old girl in an elevator as she was travelling to school.
He forcibly dragged the girl to a basement of her apartment building, raped her and attempted to strangle her with a cord.
Presumably believing he had killed her, Vérove fled the scene.
1986 – On May 5, Cécile Bloch, 11 was too travelling to school when she met Vèrove in the elevator.
She was raped and murdered by Vérove who later dumped her body in a basement.
1987 – On April 1987, Vèrove killed Gilles Politi, a 38-year-old aerial technician, and Irmgard Müller, a German au pair employed by Politi’s family, in an apartment in Paris.
Their bodies were discovered together in the apartment: Politi had been stripped naked and forced to lie face down, with his arms and legs bound in a choke lace.
Müller had been hung by her arms from the upright frame of a bunk bed, her throat slashed with a knife. Both victims had suffered physical torture via cigarette burns before death.
1987 – On October 27, a fourteen-year-old girl returning home from school was stopped by Vérove, who identified himself as a police officer and claimed he needed to question her for an investigation.
Vérove soon dragged his victim into an apartment before handcuffing and raping her.
He left her alive after burglarizing the apartment.
1994 – On June 29, An eleven-year-old girl, identified as Ingrid was approached by Vérove who abducted her.
She was driven more than an hour away to an abandoned farm at Essonne, where she was raped for several hours.
Vérove fled the scene without killing Ingrid.
Police believe he grabbed her as she came out of the building’s lift on her way to school and dragged her into the basement.
Her parents died without knowing who killed their daughter and family lawyer Didier Seban said it was “painful to know that the criminal took his secrets with him”.
His other victims had included Gilles Politi, a 38-year-old aviation technician, and Irmgard Müller, a German au pair, 20, who were both killed in Paris in 1987.
Vérove is also the suspect in another murder near Paris, of 19-year-old Karine Leroy, in 1994 and is thought to have strangled a couple to death in in 1987.
The killer is known to have raped at least two other children and is suspected of having committed a total of up to 31 murders and rapes until 1994.
In 2021, an investigation into the murders was reopened and some 750 gendarmes, who had been deployed in the Paris region at the time of the crimes, were called in for questioning.
One of them was Vérove who was sent a summons on September 24 for questioning on September 29.
But he was then reported missing by his wife on September 27 and found dead two days later in Grau-du-Roi, a seaside resort on the Mediterranean coast.
On the day of his suicide, Vérove cooked lunch, had a nap as usual in the afternoon and engaged in everyday chatter before saying he was going out for a bicycle ride.
He is said to have killed himself fearing his arrest.