September 5 1997, Patrice Alègre, a handsome 32 years old man from Toulouse (south of France) was arrested in Paris.

He's been charged for the rape and murder of 6 young women, between 1989 and 1997, plus one rape and one attempted killing. He could have killed 15 more people (men and women).

He was charged with the murder of his neighbour in 1989 in Toulouse, his neighbour in 1990 in Saint Géniès-Bellevue, a prostitute in 1992, and 3 women in 1997. He travelled in Belgium, Germany and Spain, where he met his last victim (he killed her in Paris).

He was an ex-bouncer of discotheque, had a passion for culturism, and was a "Don Juan".

He was said to be a "teenager with problems". He's been in many prisons and detention centers. He has a daughter, born in 1989. He has still not been judged. His trial is fixed in november.

Patrice Alègre, 33, who is on trial until the end of this month.

He's accused of raping and killing 5 women and raping 6 more. He's suspected of killing 7 other women.

He killed in Toulouse (south of France) and in Paris. He may have killed elsewhere in France, but also in Spain, Germany and Belgium. He may have killed men too.

His victims are :

- Valérie Tarriote, 22, february 1989, in Toulouse.
- Laure Martinet, 19, his neighbour in Toulouse, january 1990.
- Martine Matias, 29, in Toulouse, february 1997.
- Mireille Normand, 36, in Verdun.
- Isabelle Chicherie, 31, in Paris, september 1997. Patrice Alègre was arrested the day after this murder.

Alègre knew all his victims. They were neighbours, women he met in the club where he was working, friend of a friend... All of them were brunette. He would kill when he was drunk. He wanted to have sex with the women, they refused, he beat them, tied their hands, raped them and strangled them.

The police said that two women commited suicide and were not killed.

- Valérie Tarriote was found almost nude on her bed, with her wrists tied upon her head. Two pieces of underwear were in her throat and mouth. Her underwear were torn apart. There were two glasses in the living-room.

- Martine Matias was found burned in her house. There was blood in the bathroom, and on her bra. She was in a strange position, bent, something sexual. The coroner said there was chloroforme in her muscles. The fire began in two separated places. There was a piece of an automatic pistol in the living-room.

Twice, the police concluded it was suicide ! The investigator on the Matias case had a hard time trying to explain his mistake, during the trial...

Alegre's father married his mother because she felt pregnant. He was born in june 1968. His father was a policman, he was violent and wanted is son "to live straight". Alègre really loves his mother, who was an alcoholic. They divorced in 1988.

As a teenager, he was involved in burglaries, he began to smoke joint and drink. At 17, he tried to strangle his girlfriend.

His father, during the trial, said that he was not violent but just "austere", and that he's never beaten anyone. Alègre replied : "He's lying, as usual ! I just have one regret : I didn't kill him although I promised my mother I would. I wouldn't have done all the evil I did. And I don't love him".

Alègre is handsome, nice and clever, but he's also cynical, selfish, pervert and without any remorse. He has a daughter, born in 1989, from a women he separated from in 1995, because she was fed up with him being drunk all day long and beating her.

Alègre could recieve life in prison.

By Emily Tibbatts

Patrice Alègre

His life: He was born on June 20, 1968 in Haute-Garonne, of a CRS father and a mother hairdresser. His/her father is very strict and violent one (with Patrice and its mother) and his mother (alcoholic) buys the silence of his son to hide his extra-marital frolicking. Only his/her paternal grandmother occupies herself well of him, it dies in April 2001.

During its lawsuit, Patrice Alegre known as of her parents: " I love my mother, I hate my father. My father did not raise me, it drew up me "Bad pupil, it redoubles his preparatory course, his 6éme, his 5éme and misses his CAPE.

Teenager, it falls into the minor delinquency; flight of car, burgling and traffic of cannabis. His/her father, to save appearances, protects it from the lightnings of justice. But at the end of a certain time his/her father entrusts it to a judge for child, Patrice is placed in reformatory, from where it flees to go to take refuge in his grandmother.

In 1984, as of the 16 years age, he knows his first judgments. At the same time it starts to make its first aggressions, it tries to strangle his girl friend at the time of a ball.

Thanks to his father, it obtains a young employment as barman with the police station of Toulouse. But it is condemned to 2 recoveries for violence with weapons and rebellion. Then the odd jobs come (gatekeeper of discotheque, bouncer...). The more it ages, the more it becomes violent.

From 1988 to 1995 Patrice Alegre lives with Cécile C, with whom it has a small Anaïs girl.

In 1994, Cécile C alerts several times the police force for aggravated assault. It remains for the first time in prison, for violence with weapon. But at that time it had already killed 2 times (see more). Cecile C, during the lawsuit, declares "it did not work, drank, smoked. After it broke all in the house and struck me. It was excused, while crying. It apitoyait me with its unhappy childhood. I included/understood later than it handled me. From time to time, it disappeared for one night, two or three days, and returned without anything to say where it went "

French 'orgy' storm grows

Monday, 2 June, 2003

BBCNews

Veteran French politician Dominique Baudis has challenged judges to investigate allegations that he was involved in sado-masochistic orgies organised by a convicted serial killer.

Mr Baudis, who heads France's media watchdog the CSA, strongly denies the accusations and says he is facing a political vendetta.

His challenge follows reports that the convicted killer, Patrice Alegre, has accused Mr Baudis of being involved in the orgies.

Two prostitutes have already made the same allegation.

Alegre, who appeared before magistrates at the weekend, also confessed to the murder of two more people - a female prostitute and a transvestite - in addition to the five he is known to have killed.

He said he carried out the murders under instructions from public figures, who feared the transvestite would release pictures taken with a hidden camera and that the prostitute "would not keep her mouth shut".

The orgies are alleged to have taken place in Toulouse, when Mr Baudis was mayor of the city.

One city official, chief prosecutor Jean Volff, resigned over the scandal last week.

Mr Volff said he had been named in the prostitutes' testimony to police but described their story as "totally implausible".

'Revenge'

Mr Baudis, an influential figure in the governing centre-right party, UMP, has led a vocal campaign to ban hardcore pornography from television over the last year.

The former mayor says he believes that elements of the pornography industry may be spreading the orgy stories in order to get revenge on him for the campaign.

He has asked to be put under investigation so that his lawyer can gain access to the evidence against him.

"It is unacceptable that a man's honour can be tainted by the words of a murderer serving a life sentence and of two prostitutes," Mr Baudis' lawyer, Francis Szpiner, told Liberation newspaper.

Asked why his client had taken the unusual step of asking to be placed under judicial investigation, Mr Szpiner said it was "the only way to fight on equal terms against the purveyors of slander".

Being placed under formal investigation is a step that falls short of criminal charges but implies a prima facie case.

Cocaine

Alegre, for his part, said he wanted the truth to be told.

"I cannot accept that the truth will be suppressed because the people involved are people in power," he wrote in a letter sent secretly from prison and published in Monday's French press.

"[The two prostitutes] are telling the truth when they say they went with me to sado-masochistic parties... and that certain members of the Toulouse bourgeoisie were there, and everyone was going for the cocaine," Alegre wrote.

Alegre was jailed for life in 2002 for six rapes and five murders.

He is also under investigation in connection with a criminal network in Toulouse said to have involved minors and cocaine.

'Orgy' scandal shakes French trust

Wednesday, 9 July, 2003

BBCNews

For the past two months, France has been gripped by a sordid tale of sado-masochistic sex, drugs and murder in the southern city of Toulouse.

The allegations are that senior city officials not only covered up for a jailed serial killer, Patrice Alegre, but that they even ordered some of his killings to protect themselves from blackmail after they attended his sado-masochistic orgies.

But in the latest twist, one of those officials has cleared his name by confronting his accusers in court.

The whole affair began in 1997, when a special homicide squad started to investigate the unexplained disappearance of 115 women and girls in the Toulouse region dating back to 1992.

As a result of the investigation, serial killer Patrice Alegre was jailed for life in February 2002, on six charges of rape and five murders.

But this summer - from his prison cell - he began to respond to new allegations made by two former Toulouse prostitutes, known as Fanny and Patricia, in the ongoing investigations into other unsolved murders.

On French TV, Patricia's voice and appearance were heavily disguised as she repeated her testimony to police.

She claimed that magistrates and senior politicians in Toulouse had attended sado-masochistic orgies partly organised by Alegre in a council-owned chateau.

Patricia also alleged that she and Fanny had witnessed Patrice Alegre kill another two prostitutes.

He in turn, in a letter to a French TV programme, confessed to the killings but claimed they were ordered by town officials to cover up their attendance at the orgies.

Even more bizarrely, Patricia and Alegre implied that the French head of broadcasting standards and anti-pornography campaigner, Dominique Baudis, was involved in their sex ring while mayor of Toulouse.

Look in the face

It is a claim he has vigorously denied all along, saying that the pornography industry was trying to take its revenge by blackening his name.

So Mr Baudis demanded to go to court to confront Patricia face to face before a judge, and see if she could repeat the allegations while looking him in the eye.

She could not, and he emerged from court with his name cleared.

"The accusations made against me are nothing but lies," he told the media as he emerged from court. "I looked my accuser in the face and she couldn't return my gaze. My accuser came escorted by two gendarmes, and she is leaving with two gendarmes. I came here as a free man, and I am leaving as a free man."

Patricia may now go on trial for perjury for the allegations against Mr Baudis, who swore to continue the fight against those who had wrongly accused him.

He also blamed the local Toulouse newspaper, La Depeche du Midi, for stirring up trouble.

Yet the newspaper defends its revelations against other top Toulouse officials.

One judge was removed from the case, while it emerged that another had gone drinking with the serial killer, who is the son of a local policeman and used to work in the police canteen.

The Toulouse police have also been accused of a cover-up.

They classified some of the serial killer's murders of local prostitutes as suicide, despite compelling evidence to the contrary.

La Depeche du Midi's editor Jean-Christof Giesbert says the town's authorities have hardly covered themselves in glory.

"We want to know why it seems that the investigation has stopped or got no further. There are still many people to be questioned by the judges, but that isn't happening - why not? We get the impression the authorities are keen to let it drop."

Split public

In the cafes of Toulouse, the scandal has split public opinion.

One young student is convinced that Dominique Baudis was the victim of a conspiracy against him.

"He was a good mayor and a he's a good man. He never did those things he was accused of, the sexual things - not in Toulouse."

But others believe that the local authorities did fail in the Alegre case, catching him too late, and they do suspect that there may have been strange goings-on at council properties, which still have not been properly explained.

"I think most people here are disgusted by the system, and many of us believe we may never know the full truth of what happened at all," says one young woman from Toulouse.

For most of France, the story has been little more than titillation over morning coffee. But for the people of Toulouse, the revelations have shaken their faith in their politicians, police and the justice system.

Whatever revelations are still to come, that damage will take a long time to repair.