Former French warrant officer and accused serial killer Pierre Chanal took his own life early yesterday, hours after his trial began for the kidnapping and murder of three young men including Irish hitch-hiker Mr Trevor O'Keeffe. From Lara Marlowe, in Reims
Families of the victims yesterday expressed outrage and disbelief that Mr Chanal, who had attempted suicide twice before, was allowed to cheat them of justice.
Mr Chanal had been hospitalised since taking an overdose of sleeping pills when his trial was supposed to start in May. He went on hunger strike in July and weighed only 48 kilos.
French authorities believe Mr Chanal hid razor blades under the label of his jogging trousers before his transfer from Fresnes prison to Reims hospital on Monday.
Mr Chanal cut his left femoral artery, under the bedclothes to avoid being seen, shortly after 12.30 a.m. yesterday.
He used the elastic from the waistband of his trousers as tourniquets around his thighs. "That enabled him to lose blood more quickly," said Mr Vincent Lesclous, a prosecutor. "It took between four and seven minutes for him to die."
The accused killer had warned that he would die rather than stand trial. Yet incredibly, a guard was not posted in his room. Three policemen stayed in an adjacent cubicle, outside a glass door. They looked into his room every 10 minutes. "He was a particularly determined man. Ten minutes were enough for him to do it," Mr Lesclous said.
Mr Chanal is believed to have murdered at least eight men between January 4th, 1980, and August 8th, 1987, when the body of Mr O'Keeffe was found near the "Mourmelon Triangle" where the young men went missing.
Six were conscripts from the Mourmelon camp where Mr Chanal was stationed. Four of them were directly under his orders.
Ms Eroline O'Keeffe, Trevor's mother, has pursued the case for 16 years. "We didn't strive for Chanal's suicide," she said yesterday. "We strove for truth and justice, and he robbed us of that, just as he robbed me of my son."
Ms O'Keeffe blamed French authorities for Mr Chanal's death. "They allowed it to happen," she said. By taking his own life, Mr Chanal ensured that legally he will be forever presumed innocent, despite damning evidence. I think his suicide proves his guilt."
DNA tests matched hairs on a mattress in Mr Chanal's van to the last three victims.
"French justice," muttered Ms Julia O'Keeffe, Trevor's older sister. "There were people who didn't want this trial to happen."
The French military were long suspected of hushing up the "Mourmelon Triangle" disappearances to avoid scandal. Authorities handled the investigation so badly, losing evidence and failing to follow up leads, that five of eight cases had to be dropped. Only two bodies were found.
Although Mr Chanal refused to attend his own trial, relatives hoped desperately that he or a witness might reveal where he buried his victims.
"Pierre Chanal has gone away with his secrets," said Mr Gérard Chemla, the lawyer for the French families. "He has committed his last crime."
Mr André Buffard, Mr Chanal's lawyer, continued to defend his client. "What more do the victims want?" he asked.
"He's dead. The justice system, which committed many errors in this affair, had to redeem itself. They needed a guilty party, and Chanal was perfect. They organised a trial to convict him. Not to judge him; to convict him."
Mr Paläzs Falvay, the Hungarian whom Mr Chanal was convicted of raping in 1988, was scheduled to testify yesterday, and Mr Chanal dreaded the hearing. Described by psychiatrists as meticulous, obsessive and sadistic, Mr Chanal couldn't bear others thinking ill of him.
His sister Simone testified on Tuesday that the accused killer "lived eight years of hell" after he was freed in 1995 because of his shame over the Falvay case. "He was afraid that people would recognise him," Ms Chanal said.When Mr Chanal's trial was officially terminated at Reims courthouse yesterday morning, Mr Falvay, now a goldsmith in Budapest, stood alone in the courtroom. Mr Chanal had bound him, choked him with a chain and sodomised him for 20 hours, filming his crime, and probably would have killed him had gendarmes not happened on the van in a country lane.
"This is the best solution," Mr Falvay told the O'Keeffe family when they greeted him. "With this, he confirms everything. If he'd been convicted of three of the eight, there was nothing for the other five families."
"I would have liked to see him tried," Ms O'Keeffe said. "Somebody gave him the blade."
"You wanted to see him here?" Mr Falvay asked rhetorically. "We can go to the morgue and look at him. He did it. You cannot get more from him. The sons of these people will never come back."