She was strangled, he was tortured and emasculated | Virey case

We are on Friday, June 28, 1996, in Pont-d’Ain, a small commune located 60 kilometers from Lyon. It is almost midnight at the Viret home. Jérémy, three years old, the youngest, fell asleep a long time ago. The eldest, Jean-Pierre, twelve years old, is waiting quietly for the return of his parents. His mother and his stepfather went out in the early evening. Today, Jean-Pierre still remembers that Friday night very well.

I tell myself that everything is fine because they are used to going out at night, going to have a drink, and it is not… they are used to coming home late, so I do not worry. I tell myself maybe, there, they met people, maybe they drank a little too much, so they stayed to sleep with people, so I tell myself they will come home the next morning, knowing my mom that she is a bit of a party animal and that, therefore, there, she has fun.

The night passes. Saturday morning, Jean-Pierre wakes up quietly. Yet, when he goes to his parents’ bedroom, a bad surprise awaits him: they have still not come home. While waiting for them, Jean-Pierre feeds breakfast to his little brother.

There is his mom, so I try to calm him down, so I tell him, “Do not worry, Mom, she will come home. Eat quietly, go play.”

We played together, the two of us, at the game, and, there, after I am… so the evening, the evening arrives, still not there. There, I really start to be really very, very worried, even if he is used to very late night outings of his parents. I think that a night following like that, it is to him similarly unusual.

I do not sleep all night. I am still waiting for them, and the next morning, they are still not there. This time, Jean-Pierre is truly anxious. The twelve-year-old adolescent calls the gendarmes himself. Here is Chief Warrant Officer Ivanicour, today in charge of sensitive investigations. He wished to testify with his face hidden, but he remembers perfectly the phone call from Jean-Pierre.

I am all alone at the home of Papa and Mom. My parents have not come home since Friday night. It is not normal. We are all alone here with my little brother, and you must intervene.

He goes, “You live where? At what place? We will come.”

The gendarme is flabbergasted. What does this phone call from a twelve-year-old child mean? One of two things: either it is a bad joke, or it is a genuine cry for help. The gendarmerie arrives and sees the two children alone. There, move, move. It is indeed a twelve-year-old child who comes to open the door for them, so they ask him what it is, pose the question to him.

Is it you who called us? What is happening to you?

And the child is in tears. His little brother is behind. They are still in pajamas, and, there, he says, “But Papa and my mom left Friday night and since then they have not come home.”

It is the beginning of an incredible criminal investigation with only a worried young adolescent and a little boy who barely speaks as witnesses.

Your parents arrived when? And they were doing what? Well, what is your name?

The gendarmes question Jean-Pierre. They attempt to find out more about his mother, Patricia Viret, 41 years old, and his stepfather, Jean-François Viret, 42 years old.

Yes, I grew up with my mom until the age of eight. After, I had my little brother. My mother met Jean-François, my father, my stepfather, whom I consider as my father.

Jean-François and Patricia met on the occasion of a funfair. It was a very significant love at first sight. They will very quickly move in together. They were married two months later. Everything is beautiful like newlyweds, there. It is a couple described as in love, fusional, and with a rather recent but strong history.

It is super, I see my… I see my mom there, she is happy there, and that had not happened for a very long time.

Both of them think that they are going to build a great love story together. A great love story starts between Patricia and Jean-François, and the two children, Jean-Pierre and Jérémy, seem to have perfectly accepted this new life. So, a question arises: does Patricia, by disappearing, put this nascent happiness in danger?

Patricia is close to her children. She takes care of her children. Manifestly, she has a strong relationship with her children, so it is difficultly imaginable for the investigation to think that Patricia could have abandoned her children. Can a mother abandon her child? No, no, a mother cannot abandon her child.

The gendarmes are more and more perplexed. What if the eldest of the children had forgotten to report a capital detail to them?

But you can say anything.

They then ask Jean-Pierre to recount precisely the evening of Friday, June 28, 1996.

I come home from school. My mother is at the house with my stepfather and my little brother. She asks him to take care of his little brother, who is aged three years, alone, the two of them at the home, telling him, “You will make him food, I prepared what is needed. We are going out and we will come home later in the evening, do not worry.”

Jean-François and Patricia leave quietly in the direction of Bourg-en-Bresse, which is approximately distant by about twenty kilometers from Pont-d’Ain. So, they leave for town indeed to drink a glass. It is their habit; moreover, they are often in town in bars. The famous Friday night, Jean-François and Patricia Viret left their home between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM.

Around 10:30 PM, 11:00 PM, I receive a phone call, so I am going to answer and there, it is my mother who telephones me, who tells me, “We are in a bar, we will not be long coming home.” So I tell her, “Well, there is no problem, anyway everything is fine at the house, Jérémy is sleeping, there, everything is fine.”

So, if everything was going so well, as Patricia had just told her child, why does the couple no longer give any news? A first lead imposes itself on the gendarmes, who are going to pose the first questions that one poses in a similar case, which is to know if the parents, having left with their automobile vehicle, did not have an accident. So, they made the verifications with the hospital organizations, with the surrounding gendarmerie brigades to see if a car, a Renault 21 which belonged therefore to the couple, had not been involved or reported in a road accident. There was no accident that was reported, so the thesis of the accident appears unlikely. The lead of the road accident is ruled out definitively.

Then, the investigators concentrate on the only clue that the children gave: the phone call from the parents the night of their disappearance.

And then the little one is in bed already? Agreed, everything is fine then, well, it is good.

One of the first steps of the investigators is to verify with the telephony organizations, therefore France Télécom, if there indeed exists an incoming call to the home of the Viret family in the time slot communicated by the child. And there, yes, there is indeed a call, so at 10:30 PM on June 28. Patricia and Jean-François Viret are indeed in a bar in the middle of consuming drinks in a bar which was called the Bentley at the time, which is situated in town in Bourg-en-Bresse.

The gendarmes repair immediately to the bar in question, and they present the photos of the couple to the boss of the establishment. The boss of the bar remembers very well the presence of this couple, of whom he noted no abnormal behavior or something that could intrigue him. He remembers a couple in love in the middle of drinking a glass quietly, discussing, the two of them, and who seem neither worried nor living something particular. Only, after their passage in the bar, no lead, no clue offers the slightest explanation.

The investigators decide then to dig into the past of Jean-François and Patricia Viret to attempt to understand this sudden disappearance—a past, to say the least, dark. One is going to very quickly perceive that it is not a classic couple and that there are some areas of shadow in their past. The gendarmes question in turn the family, the friends, and the work colleagues, and very quickly these testimonies are going to allow lighting up the investigators on the life of the Viret couple.

In the couple, there is a third character: it is alcohol. Jean-François is someone who is… who is an alcoholic, who underwent several detoxification cures when he met Patricia, and when they got married, the investigation demonstrates that they go out a lot, that they alcoholize themselves both abundantly, and a priori Jean-François fell back into his alcoholism. In any case, these are people who drink beyond what it is reasonable to drink for each of us, to start with Patricia Viret. The wife of Jean-François has a rather unbridled life. Her son can testify to it.

It was necessary that I leave immediately to buy her a pack of beer to make… so that she makes a party with her friends, and her cigarettes. She smoked a lot also.

She had her defects, her vices. She had also some acquaintances who let it appear that she was… that she had manners a bit light. It is a woman who has a life, one can say, a bit dissolved, a little uninhibited. One feels well pointing the alcohol, an unbridled sexuality, finally, let us say, a bit on the margins of social norms. We are not in the presence of a normal family; everything is atypical.

As for Jean-François Viret, he is a man who can be violent. The investigation is going to demonstrate that Jean-François Viret is not the ideal husband. A character whom one describes as very carried on drink with accessions of anger when he has drunk; he is uncontrollable. It is all. We have this style of character a little impulsive and angry, and who knew in his… within his previous couple some small troubles of violence. There is one of his companions, of his ex-concubines, who comes to recount that in an accession of violence, he attempted to strangle her.

Jean-François Viret is not only a violent man when he has drunk. In the past, he committed several offenses, as shown here by his criminal record: theft of a vehicle, insurance fraud, physical violence. Jean-François Viret is a confirmed delinquent. And there is a particular trait in the personality of Jean-François Viret which could well explain the thesis of a crime of passion: the man is jealous.

He is of a sickly jealousy, omnipresent. He verifies her facts and gestures, what she could have done or said, and that creates in the couple a climate of tension and of strong misunderstanding.

Consequently, the investigators privilege the lead of a violent dispute between Jean-François, the jealous one, and his wife—a dispute that would have turned bad.

Would something not have passed after the bar, the Bentley, after 10:00, 10:30 PM this June 28, 1996, that made that Jean-François had a dispute with his spouse to the point of making her disappear? Why not? And then himself to disappear? It is an hypothesis which was… which begins to germinate in your spirit at that moment. Maybe does she have a lover? Maybe Patricia has another relationship than that of Jean-François Viret that Jean-François would not have supported? It is also a possibility, and alcohol facilitating the passage to the act.

The fact remains that the lead of the jealous husband who would have killed his wife and would have committed suicide afterward gives nothing concrete. It is a new dead end for the gendarmes.

While the investigation stagnates, Jean-Pierre and Jérémy find themselves alone, without parents. The instructing judge places then the two boys at the Children’s Home of Bourg-en-Bresse.

I do not understand why I am here, so I do not know why I am here already.

The two boys of the disappeared couple are in full distress, but they hope still for the return of their parents. In vain, Jean-Pierre is worried, he is unhappy.

I am all the same quite perturbed. Jean-Pierre expects news of his mom, and Jérémy also. My little brother, he poses questions to me. He tells me, “And Mom, she is where? And Papa, he is where?” I go, “Well, they are going to come, they are going to come get us, do not worry, it is going to go. It is just… it is that, it is not going to last long, you will see.”

Each day that passes brings no revelation and brings not the return… brings not the return of their mom, Patricia.

And in my head, I tell myself that it is always a joke, that my mother is going to come retrieve me because there is my birthday which arrives. It is… and I tell myself they are making a joke for my birthday.

The time passes. Since now two months, the Viret couple has disappeared, and one is still without news of them. This becomes worrying because everything passes as if Patricia and Jean-François had literally evaporated. They left with the minimum, well, perhaps with their wallet, but finally, well, they have nothing on them. They took no disposition. It is necessary to have a little money, and there one perceives that Jean-François Viret has… has a little money on his account, and this money is still present on the account.

My brother could have telephoned me, said to himself, “Well, look, I am going to go see her, I need money, I have nothing.” Sign of life from no one. So, there, it is worrying. It is truly a complete disappearance. He gives no sign of life? No, there is something, there is something not clear.

Without a clue, without any serious lead, the investigators decide to play the all for the all. It is their last card: they are going to mediatize the case, and this is going to work. The judge and the investigators are going to take a decision: they are going to try to make public this case by deciding a call for witnesses.

We say to ourselves the only possibility is that we passed beside something, and therefore we are going to make appeal to the press. And it is there that for the truly… one explains to me the disappearance of this couple, departed from their home one evening, who telephoned, who left two children at the house, and of whom one knows nothing since more than two months, what. So, there, myself, as a journalist in the various facts, I tell myself there, there is really a problem.

That is how in the month of August appears in Le Progrès, in the Ain, an article under the title “A Couple Volatilizes Between Bourg-en-Bresse and Pont-d’Ain.” An article is published inviting the eventual witnesses to furnish information to the gendarmerie of Bourg, to the brigade of departmental research concerning the couple itself and the Renault 21. Following this call, extraordinary stroke of luck, a serious witness is going to manifest himself.

Effectively, on reading the article, witnesses and notably a witness is going to signal himself, and there a telephone call ends up telling us, “But a Renault 21, but a gray Renault 21, but there is one in the gravel pits. It makes more than a week that I see it. It is at the bottom of the water at the gravel pits of Ambronay.”

Hope is reborn on the side of the gendarmes. The gravel pit of Ambronay is an isolated place which serves as a deposit of rubble between Bourg-en-Bresse and Pont-d’Ain. It is especially a place midway between the domicile of the Viret couple and the bar where they were seen for the last time.

We are August 21, 1996, two months after the disappearance of the Viret spouses. Immediately, the gendarmes repair to the scene—the gendarmerie services of the fisheries, the firemen, the divers. And there, one looks into this body of water: there is a submerged car which is a Renault 21, of which one cannot read the registration plates. The car is not very visible; it is filled with moss. And one of the gendarmes present undresses, dives to go clean the plate. He is going to approach to see what this vehicle is. There is a thing altogether astonishing: a arm which exceeds through a window of the car. It is flabbergastedness. A body would find itself in the vehicle.

A crane is then routed to the scene to extract from the water the car of the Viret spouses.

One decides obviously to… to bring out the vehicle from the gravel pit and the body which is supposed to be inside. The car is going to be extricated from the body of water, and they are going to bring it up very slowly, and one is going to have this… this spectacle, I was going to say macabre and completely seizing. One distinguishes very neatly an arm, then… the more the car empties, and one is going to discover that there is not one body inside, but two bodies.

A scene of true horror at that moment. The gendarmes no longer have any doubt: it is the Renault 21 of the couple. Inside, a man and a woman. They have the confirmation; they know that at that moment they found the couple who is deceased. The mystery of the disappearance of the Viret spouses is finally elucidated. It remains to know the circumstances of their death.

Immediately, the gendarmes telephone the Children’s Home in Bourg-en-Bresse. The social assistants must announce the terrible news to the children.

I was at the playground with my little brother, and there is an educator who comes to see me, who tells me, “Jean-Pierre, it is necessary that I speak to you.” I say, “Yes, what is there?” She tells me, “We found your parents.” And there… there, I do not understand. I go, “Agreed. Yeah, and so?” “But look, they are dead.” There, I do not know what to say, there. And in fact, I go to them, “How so?” He goes, “Well, we found them. They submerged themselves in the water in the car.” So, I tell myself, “OK.”

At the gravel pit, it is the moment of the first observations. The bodies of the spouses are brought out of the waterhole. They are in an advanced state of putrefaction, and everything indicates that it acts of a criminal act. The first technical examinations of the vehicle show already that the accelerator cable was cut, the position of the headlights was turned on, the doors were locked, so there is necessarily an intervention of a third person. This sectioned cable, this turned-on headlight, the neutral point, that lets one think that the car was voluntarily pushed into the gravel pit where the assassins deliberately wanted to hide the vehicle and the bodies after having committed their double assassination.

Only, for the investigators, the task announces itself difficult because the bodies stayed near two months in the water and, consequently, there is no longer any exploitable trace. It is consternation because the investigators do not find traces of blood, no particular traces, no material clue, no footprint, no digital footprint, no weapon, neither knife nor cutter, nothing that could explain the crime. On the blow, it is the autopsy which is going to allow knowing more on the circumstances of the death of the Virets, and notably as concerns Patricia.

The autopsy is going to bring determining elements. First of all, one will know that they did not die drowned. More certainty: we have traces of manual strangulation which brought about her decease, so we are in the framework of a homicide, of a murder by strangulation, by strangulation. If Patricia has indeed been strangled, in the couple, the most atrocious death is indeed that of Jean-François Viret.

We were in flabbergastedness; there we are going to return… we are going to tilt into horror. He died of hemorrhage. He emptied himself of his blood, and the hemorrhage was provoked by a gesture, by a wound which is not an ordinary wound, since it acts of an emasculation. The sex of Jean-François Viret was cut at a height of three centimeters, plus testicles. He emptied himself of his blood like a pig that one would have left to agonize in atrocious sufferings that one can imagine. One confirms effectively the emasculation by a slicing object, so genre probably billhook, says one, although one does not have the confirmation of it.

Supplementary detail: the autopsy determines that he was emasculated alive. When the sister of Jean-François Viret learns in what circumstances her brother was tortured to death, she is appalled.

It is even more than barbarity, it is savagery. It is… it is even something that… that one cannot imagine, which… which is unthinkable, which… which cannot exist on earth. I… one cannot qualify it. It is… I had pain at the heart, I had a desire to vomit, I had… I do not know, I… it is unthinkable.

Even the investigators are shocked. It is an extremely rare act. Me, in my career of magistrate, I had never seen it. There is there an act of barbarity of archaic type. After the unsustainable, it is the time of questions and interpretations on this emasculation because this act of torture has forcibly a very particular signification. The author knew forcibly his victim and wanted to avenge himself. One wants to avenge oneself of a relation with a woman. It is a gesture of punishment, and one punishes by there where one sinned.

We are in front of a settlement of accounts, of a rivalry between third parties and the Viret couple, that manifestly these were persons who knew the Viret couple. One does not kill someone like that whom one does not know. The sexual life of this couple a bit uninhibited, a bit dissolved, it takes a certain resonance at that moment, and the investigators begin to… to pose questions to themselves on the entourage of the couple and wonder from where could have come the blow. And the investigation is going to orient itself around all the acquaintances and the frequentations of the Viret couple.

And it is by digging anew into the past of Jean-François Viret that the investigators are going to discover an event apparently harmless but which is going to allow the investigation to make a capital leap. We are February 10, 1996, in Bourg-en-Bresse, four months only before the disappearance of the Viret couple. That day, Jean-François Viret is going to deposit a complaint because an incident produced itself at the bottom of his home: someone took it out on his car. A neighbor comes to warn them as to what there is an individual who is in the middle of, traceably moreover, an individual in delivery completely drunk, who is in the middle of sacking their car. So, Jean-François descends immediately, followed by Patricia. Immediately, a fight breaks out in full street between the two men. Suddenly, everything degenerates because two other persons come to mix themselves in it.

A neighbor decides to alert the police services, and therefore the local commissariat sends to the scene a patrol which is going to proceed to the interpellation of all this little world. So are interpellated on the scene Patricia Viret, Jean-François, and three individuals. The identity of the three aggressors is revealed. The first calls himself Thierry Maroutou—it is he who, drunk, sacked the car of Jean-François Viret. The second names himself Bruno Pribanic—he stayed a bit apart during the fight. As for the third man, Jean-François Viret knows him well, and Jean-Pierre, his son, also.

It was the ex-boyfriend to my mother, who calls himself Pascal Spiteri.

Pascal Spiteri was the lover of Patricia during four years, just before she met her future husband Jean-François Viret. The investigators hold finally a lead. What if the ex-lover had wanted to avenge himself of his rival? Pascal Spiteri reproaches Jean-François for having stolen Patricia from him. At this instant of the investigation, we have a motive of death. Pascal Spiteri has not only a good reason to want to eliminate Jean-François Viret, he has also the profile: a violent man, but especially an extremely jealous man.

It is true that the investigators are going to think that notably the facts of emasculation can perfectly correspond with the… the ferocious hatred that Pascal Spiteri seems to vow vis-à-vis of Jean-François Viret. And the investigation orients itself immediately and, I was going to say, quasi-exclusively counting from this moment on the passion lead.

This time the lead is serious. The investigators have now a suspect with a solid motive. Remains a problem: Pascal Spiteri, the ex-lover, did perhaps not act alone. Then the gendarmes interest themselves in eventual accomplices and notably in those who, remember, were with Pascal Spiteri to sack the car of Jean-François Viret. One is going to observe what one did not know until then: that Spiteri works in the same society as Pribanic, that Maroutou works there also since, I believe, eighteen months. They see each other regularly, they are buddies outside of their job. Manifestly, there is a link of close friendship between Pascal, Bruno, and Thierry. If the three men know each other, it is indeed Pascal Spiteri, the ancient lover, who appears as the chief of the trio—someone extremely violent with a lot of ascendancy over the people he rubs shoulders with. A boy relatively timid and little… and little enterprising, some of his comrades present him to us as being under the influence of Spiteri. A big sturdy fellow, a boy very direct but apparently very, very influenceable despite everything.

On September 10, 1996, the investigators are persuaded to have identified the trio responsible for the death of the Viret spouses: Thierry Maroutou, Bruno Pribanic, and Pascal Spiteri are going to be interpellated. It is then that produces itself an incredible scene when the gendarmes arrive to arrest the ex-lover of Patricia, Pascal Spiteri. He is interpellated on his place of work, and at that moment there is going to be an incident which is going to make the investigators jump. When one presents oneself to Monsieur Spiteri, when one asks him if he knows why one comes to look for him and why one comes to place him in police custody, he answers us quite simply, “Yes, it is for the story of… of Patricia and of Jean-François, but it is not me, it is Maroutou.”

And Pascal Spiteri does not content himself with accusing of the massacre one of his underlings. He indicates to the gendarmes that someone is missing from the roll call: a fourth man. That night, four men would have therefore participated in the double murder. He is going to indicate to the investigators that he was not alone, that they were four, that there was him, of course, that there was Pribanic, that there was Maroutou, and then that there was a brother-in-law, a close relation of Maroutou, a certain Félix. Four men to kill the Viret couple, but what is the role of each? Once more, it is the chief of the band who recounts his version to the gendarme.

In police custody, Pascal Spiteri shows himself very cooperative, and he is not stingy of details to evoke the famous evening of June 28 where took place the double murder. And here is what he recounts. On Friday evening, the band of four has a rendezvous with the Viret spouses around midnight here in the bar the Bentley, in full center of Bourg-en-Bresse. Objective of the encounter: to regulate the dispute which followed the sacking of the car of Jean-François Viret. In effect, the husband of Patricia brought a complaint after the degradations on his Renault 21, and he counts well that Maroutou, the vandal, reimburse the costs of repair of his car.

And he tells us, “We went to the Bentley.” There, astonishment: the Bentley, place where the Viret couple was seen for the last time alive, since it is there that they passed their phone call. Pascal Spiteri pursues his recital. He and the three acolytes leave the bar Bentley with the Virets, direction this bar a bit apart from the town, at about twenty kilometers from there. And there, the things would have degenerated on the parking lot. Maroutou would have come to hands with Jean-François Viret because Maroutou refused to pay the damage occasioned to the car.

Patricia cries, screams in seeing her husband get himself savagely aggressed. At this precise moment, Patricia Viret goes to seek help. Only her ex-lover, Pascal Spiteri, is going to prevent her from it.

It is too late, it is too late, it is too late, Patricia, it is finished, it is…

And he explains that at that moment, instead of… of helping her, he would have had him also a scene of violence, of madness, and that he would slap Patricia. He is going to throw himself on her, he is going to slap her, he is going to catch her by the neck, he is going to undress her, and he strangles her.

Then the band of four files in direction of the gravel pit of Ambronay. In the car, Patricia is already dead, but Jean-François Viret, he is unconscious. It is at the gravel pit that would have taken place the… the horrible scene there. Maroutou is going to become completely mad, and he is going to lower the pants of Jean-François, who is apparently half fainted under the… the blows he received beforehand. Félix would have held Jean-François Viret, a bit groggy.

I saw Maroutou section the bas between the legs of Jean-François.

Before the investigators, Pascal Spiteri swears to have not participated in the massacre, neither him nor his friend Bruno Pribanic. Spiteri and Pribanic are… are attired spectators of the scene, that is to say that they do not intervene, but they are completely, to say of Spiteri, overtaken by the situation, totally become uncontrollable. And then after, the men pushed the vehicle into the water, leaving thus the vehicle and the bodies inside the vehicle.

For the gendarmes, the version of the ex-lover of Patricia seems credible—first because he recognizes having killed his ancient love with force of detail, then because one of the four, Bruno Pribanic, confirms this same version. There is therefore no reason to doubt the declarations of Spiteri. The spontaneous declarations of… of Spiteri confirm all the details which were gathered previously in the framework of the investigation: the circumstances of the emasculation, the acceleration cable cut, the fact that the vehicle was precipitated into the gravel pit. Everything completely open, all the elements find themselves finally. The fact finds itself corroborated by the declarations of Spiteri.

The investigators are however confronted with a serious problem because two of the four men accused deny all implication, to commence with Thierry Maroutou, suspected of having emasculated Jean-François Viret. And Maroutou is absolutely flabbergasted. Maroutou has never recognized the facts; at no moment he denies. But the man has an unverifiable alibi: he says that he stayed at his home to watch television. He is going to describe certain of the programs, but, well, the verification will allow not to verify if yes or no he was at his home that night.

Finally, the fourth man, Michel Félix, does not understand why one accuses him of complicity during the torture of Jean-François Viret. Michel Félix, one interpellates him, he does not know why, he falls from the clouds. He does not know Jean-François Viret, even less Patricia. He has never had affair with him, so he wonders truly what he is doing in this mess there, what. Lightning fell on his head, that is… is certain, and he, he cries his innocence. He says to himself, “But what is happening? What are you imputing a crime to me?”

I was a buddy, and on the accusation uniquely of Pascal Spiteri, since it is practically the only charge there is against him. To try to defend himself, Michel Félix explains that he was at his home in the middle of preparing a frog fishing—an alibi quite thin in the eyes of the investigators. So, it is an alibi which… which plays nothing, it is of circumstance. One will never say that it is invented, that will never have been said.

Two men who accuse, two men who deny, and yet the instructing judge is going to put in examination the band of four for voluntary homicide with act of torture and of barbarity. They are all locked up.

And three years pass. Justice has confessions on the part of two of the four accused, only she has still no material proof of the implication or of the role of the members of the band of four. And things are going to complicate themselves because a theatrical stroke produces itself: Pascal Spiteri returns on his confessions. Now he says to have never participated in the massacre. Monsieur Spiteri is going to retract himself and say that he invented everything, and that all that is the fruit of his imagination, and that in fact he was never present at the pub of Noirfontaine, never been present at the gravel pits that night, and that he had imagined everything. Henceforth, they are no longer two but three to clamor their innocence. At the assizes, everything will repose on a single man who, he, maintains his confessions: Bruno Pribanic.

The trial opens June 21, 1999, at the Court of Assizes of the Ain in Bourg-en-Bresse. It is the trial of an archaic crime committed in circumstances particularly sordid. For the family, it is a very awaited trial—an atmosphere extremely heavy, extremely tense. It is a judicial furnace at that moment, truly. Facing the box where are seated the four accused, the families of victims expect the truth.

I feel a relief, I said to myself that is it, I make my mourning. I have culprits, I will know why, how.

In the courtroom, there are two absents: the two children of the Viret couple, Jean-Pierre and Jérémy, his little brother. For them, the ordeal is too difficult.

I do not have a desire to see Pascal Spiteri in face because I have hatred against him, in fact.

And yet, it is no longer on Pascal Spiteri that reposes the accusation, since he retracted himself, but indeed on Bruno Pribanic. So the president interrogates him, pushes him into his entrenchments. In a first time, Pribanic explains that he was indeed there the night of the facts, simple spectator. He says to have seen Spiteri strangle Patricia Viret, then to have seen Thierry Maroutou, aided of Michel Félix, emasculate the husband. Only, pressed by the precise questions of the president, the man loses footing and ends him also by retracting himself. And one feels that Pribanic flexes, flexes. He is truly… he is like cornered. Pribanic finds himself trapped in his contradictions and collapses in recognizing that he had until then lied.

And well no, Monsieur the President, I was not there, excuse me, there, I was not… was not on the scene, there.

So it is a theatrical stroke that everyone is helpless, everyone is helpless because one knows not on which foot to dance henceforth. All the dossier collapses. Four accused, four men who clamor their innocence. This trial where one had four men sent back, implied, and with concordant clues letting pass that effectively they had participated in this double assassination, and well, we have no more author. We have the advocate general who is going to find himself facing a puzzle completely burst. The accusation is departed in shreds. What remains of the dossier? No material element, no trace, no footprint. There were these accusations; these accusations collapse. The trial explodes.

Monday, June 28, 1999, it is the second week of the trial, and a new theatrical stroke is going to produce itself. The president broadcasts telephone wiretaps where the wife of Bruno Pribanic evokes to her sister the presence of her husband during the double crime. The president is going to make broadcast during the audience the telephone wiretaps where one is going to hear the wife of Bruno Pribanic who is going to make part of her doubts, who is going to make part of the remarks she heard, where one feels, where one hears that… one understands that Bruno Pribanic assisted at something grave there. Pribanic definitively cracks.

Bruno Pribanic is going to create a new theatrical stroke by saying, “Well yes, finally I was there.” That is going to provoke the… the emotion and the reactions in the room that one imagines. On listening to these recordings, Bruno Pribanic makes anew reverse machine. He was indeed present on the scene of the crime. Only, this time, he gives a new version of the drama. He explains that there is only one culprit out of the four accused: it is Pascal Spiteri, the brain of the massacre. He is going to set himself to charge Spiteri, that Spiteri organized everything, that it is Pascal Spiteri who fomented everything, and that he, Pribanic, he did nothing but help him.

And here is therefore, according to Bruno Pribanic, what would have passed June 28, 1996. That night, Thierry Maroutou and Michel Félix were not present on the scene of the crime. Pascal Spiteri was alone, and Bruno Pribanic would have joined him. Pascal Spiteri asked him to come help him, that Bruno Pribanic rendered himself immediately because he obeys always to what Spiteri asks him. Arrived on the scene, he found him in the places of the gravel pit. He observed that Patricia and Jean-François were dead. He did not too much ask for explanation from Pascal Spiteri; he understood the situation. That he in fact aided his friend to conceal the bodies and to push especially the vehicle into the gravel pit because a man all alone could not push alone the vehicle.

The new smashing revelations of Bruno Pribanic make the effect of a bomb. What is going to decide in his requisition the advocate general, Georges Fenech, ready yet before the audience to expedite the band of four to prison during decades? Imagine my position. One expects obviously of the advocate general that he defend the interests of the society and in that that he claim penalties, but all of a sudden my certitudes flew into pieces. I acquire the conviction, the certitude that Thierry Maroutou and Félix Michel were put in cause deliberately and wrongly, and I asked very clearly for their acquittal, what effectively is an extremely rare position on the side of the seat of the public ministry.

In change, for Pascal Spiteri, there is no doubt. The advocate general claims thirty years, and he interpellates the accused.

You are the author. You had the motive, you had the… the means to commit this double assassination. It is you who are nourished of this jealousy of having been flouted, of having lost Patricia, who was your mistress. There is only you who have this will to do harm, to make suffer, to attain Jean-François Viret in his… in his virility.

But for the advocate general, Pascal Spiteri has forcibly an accomplice. Georges Fenech claims therefore fifteen to eighteen years of prison against Bruno Pribanic.

On July 2, 1999, the verdict falls. Maroutou is acquitted, Félix is acquitted. It is a great cry of joy when one hears the acquittal for Thierry Maroutou and Michel Félix. At the moment I hear the acquittal, I tend my arm on the side of the box, I tend my hand and Félix seizes it, and we… we shake hands, finally, there… that is it, he won. Pascal Spiteri, he is condemned to thirty years of criminal reclusion with twenty years of security. Remains the case of Bruno Pribanic: he is acquitted. The jurors cut; they doubted of the culpability of Pribanic. And from the moment where they posed the question to themselves, where they did not have certitude, they had to acquit. It was about impossible to say what had been his real participation and therefore to… to pronounce a condemnation under the title of this participation.

Michel Félix and Thierry Maroutou, accused wrongly of a double odious crime, find finally the path of freedom.

The tribunal for me, it did its work correctly for a good president, and then the advocate general and all that, it was formidable. So, I hold to say something: I don’t want to Monsieur Pribanic. He was manipulated; one served oneself of him. So, it is for me a simple of spirit. It has always been a friend before he accused me. I had not well understood why he accused me; now I understood that he was manipulated, that he was put in threat of death. He told it to me in coming out of the box.

Fifteen years have passed since the double crime of the Viret spouses. Pascal Spiteri purges always his penalty at Bourg-en-Bresse. But today still, the case has left painful traces with the magistrates, certain uneasiness of the fact that one says to oneself that the judicial institution had not functioned during the instruction as one should have functioned and that we truly brushed the catastrophe. After the abominable disappearance of his parents, Jean-Pierre reconstructed himself difficultly, but he remains always haunted by a doubt.

The justice, it did its work badly because a person does that, it is impossible. He makes them come out both of the car, he strangles my mother, and he beats and he emasculates, and after he puts them both… he puts Pascal… Pascal Spiteri, he puts my parents both in the car and he pushes the car all alone to the bottom of the… the quarry. All alone, it is superhuman, super strong.

At present, Jean-Pierre, supported by his companion, expects a child. Jérémy, the youngest, has today eighteen years and has indeed much trouble to forget the drama which sacked his family.