At the first day of Mr Pierre Chanal's trial yesterday for the kidnapping and murder of three hitchhikers, including an Irishman Trevor O'Keeffe from Co Kildare, the public prosecutor said the accused serial killer was blackmailing the assize court and holding it hostage. Lara Marlowe in Reims reports
Mr Chanal lay in a hospital bed a few kilometres away, weakened by three months' hunger strike. He would rather die, he has said, than face his alleged victims' relatives in a courtroom.
Among those families, sitting in the front row, were five Irish citizens: Mrs Eroline O'Keeffe, the mother of Trevor O'Keeffe, her sister Noeleen Slattery, her son James and daughters Eroline and Julia. Mr O'Keeffe was found strangled to death in Picardy in August 1987.
Doctors reported that Mr Chanal "informed us that he refuses to come to the assize court and will oppose being taken there by all means. If he were taken by force, there is a substantial risk of medical complications, including neurological or cardio-vascular attacks."
In Mr Chanal's absence, the hostility of civil plaintiffs and the public seemed to settle on Mr André Buffard, Mr Chanal's lawyer, and Ms Simone Chanal, his sister and only character witness.
Ms Chanal, an emaciated woman of 58 who suffers from a speech impediment, hid her face with a black scarf and cloche hat. "Please don't use my married name, for the sake of my husband and children," she told the court.
"A trial cannot take place at any price," Mr Buffard said. "Can you judge this man in the state described to you? Will you force him to come here, knowing it may kill him?"
"It was his decision to stop eating," said Mr Gérard Chemla, the lawyer for the families of Mr Chanal's alleged French victims. "The first requirement of a fair trial is that the trial take place."
The public prosecutor, Mr Pascal Chaux, said Mr Chanal's behaviour was consistent with psychiatrists' profiles of him. "He says he will resist attempts to bring him here. This is blackmail, a determination to control everything. You must not let him."
Judge Christine Simon-Rossenthal decided that Mr Chanal's trial would go ahead in his absence. Every evening a court clerk will read the minutes of the day to him in hospital.
"We would like to have looked him in the eyes, and maybe he would realise what the families have been through," said Mr Joel Dubois.
His brother Patrick, who disappeared in January 1980, is believed to have been the first of eight hitchhikers kidnapped and murdered by Mr Chanal.
Evidence that Mr Chanal killed Mr O'Keeffe includes the fact that the Irishman's belongings were found near the Lac du Der, where Mr Chanal stayed in August 1987.
Indentations at Mr O'Keeffe's shallow grave corresponded to the military shovel found in Mr Chanal's van, and the earth on the shovel was identical to that in the grave.
A piece of piano wire in Mr Chanal's van was exactly the same diameter as the strangulation mark on Mr O'Keeffe's neck. And DNA in hairs in the van's foam mattress matches Mr O'Keeffe's.