‘Crazy Pierre’ sentenced to life in prison for macabre murders in France
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/07/2007 (6696 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
STRASBOURG, France (AP) – A man with a history of crime and psychiatric troubles was convicted Wednesday of viciously murdering two girls and a woman and sentenced to life in prison for the series of macabre slayings that shocked France three years ago.
Pierre Bodein, nicknamed “Pierrot le fou,” or “Crazy Pierre,” was charged with raping, killing and mutilating the two young victims – Jeanne-Marie Kegelin, 11, and Julie Scharsch,–. He also allegedly murdered and mutilated Edwige Vallee, 38, and attempted to kidnap two other girls.
All the incidents occurred in June 2004 in various locations in Alsace, near France’s border with Germany. One body was found floating in a creek, another in a vineyard.
The judges acquitted 16 other members of the Yenish community, a group of “travellers” living in trailers in eastern France, who were accused of various degrees of complicity in the crimes.
Bodein, 59, who denied wrongdoing and claimed to be the victim of a plot, stared blankly as he was led from the courtroom. He will have to spend at least 30 years in jail before becoming eligible for parole.
“It’s … the maximum possible sentence, so in that sense there’s a sense of satisfaction. But it won’t give us Julie back. It won’t soothe our pain and make up for the loss our family feels,” said Francoise Scharsch, the mother of one victim.
The defence lawyer, Marc Vialle, said before the verdict that Bodein would appeal if he was convicted.
Bodein already has spent more than 30 years in jail and psychiatric institutions since’69, once escaping from a hospital and commiting a string of crimes, including attacks on a girl and an elderly woman.
He had been conditionally released from prison three months before the 2004 murders, after serving more than a decade of what originally was a 28-year sentence for various crimes. That sentence was later reduced to 20 years even though doctors warned against an early release.