The families, including some Irish relatives, of Mr Pierre Chanal's alleged victims yesterday reacted angrily to a judge's decision to postpone the trial of the accused serial killer until the Marne Assize Court resumes in October.
"We want the trial now! We don't want any more excuses," relatives of Olivier Donner, a conscript who was murdered in October 1982, shouted when Judge Christine Simon-Rossenthal announced that Mr Chanal, who suffered a pulmonary embolism following a suicide attempt last week, is not fit to stand trial.
The bodies of only two of the eight young men Mr Chanal is believed to have killed have been found: those of Mr Donner and an Irishman, Mr Trevor O'Keeffe.
In 1982 Mr Donner's father, Georges, a gravedigger, unwittingly buried his own son in a communal grave.
Mr Éric Dupond-Moretti, the lawyer for Mr O'Keeffe's mother, Eroline, said his client accepted the postponement.
The delay was nonetheless a terrible disappointment to Ms O'Keeffe and her sister, Ms Noeleen Slattery, who have waited 16 years for justice.