Last week, François Vérove was only known as a retired police officer from Paris. However, after taking his own life, a secret he had for decades revealed itself.
According to The Guardian, while Vérove was an active police officer, a serial killer terrorized Paris through the 1980s and 90s. The murderer targeted young women and girls.
For more than three decades, the serial killer managed to escape capture, somehow evading the police officers who had been looking for him. He became known as the “pockmarked man,” or “Le Grele” in French, because of how his victims described his face.
But as it was revealed on October 1, the monster was able to do all of that because he was a police officer himself.
Because of his suicide note, it became clearer that François Vérove was the man they were looking for. According to accounts given to investigators, the killer used his police card, handcuffs, and professional restraint techniques to capture and control his victims, The Guardian reported. He was 59 years old when he was found in the apartment he was renting.
According to reports, the 35-year long investigation had finally narrowed its search down to “military police officers.” One of the hundreds of officers called in for questioning was Vérove.
State prosecutors later revealed that Vérove’s DNA matched several of the crimes. It was also reported that the note he left stated that “he had not been in a good state at the time of his crimes,” however the retired officer didn’t reveal any further details regarding his crimes.
The note did reveal that while he was not in a good state during the years he committed his crimes, Vérove revealed that he eventually “sorted himself out.” “I admit being a great criminal who committed unforgivable acts until the end of the 1990s,” the note is reported reading.
Reports suggest Vérove took a lethal amount of medication after learning investigators were on to him. Investigators believed that the serial killer was active from 1986 to 1994 and had committed several murders, rapes, and attempted murders.
According to the Independent, one of his youngest victims was an 11-year-old girl named Cecile Bloch. She went missing while on her way to school in 1986.
An attorney for some of the victims’ families, Didier Seban admitted he wasn’t surprised by the outcome of this investigation. “We were convinced it was a police officer or gendarme, both by the violence he used against his victims, and also his techniques – his way of presenting his tricolour [police] card, a certain number of things victims reported him saying … He knew all the police techniques.”
Seban added that he hopes law enforcement continue their investigation to ensure Vérove didn’t have any accomplices and “to determine the number of victims. The families must have answers.”