A French person who killed and sexually assaulted many people was on a popular TV quiz program while being chased by the police for his crimes.
François Vérove participated in ‘Everyone Wants to Take His Place’ in 2019, and two years later he killed himself as the police closed in on him.
The retired police officer seemed comfortable talking to host Nagui Fam and answering general knowledge questions in front of a live audience.
The revelation of his appearance on the TV show by the Marianne news magazine proves that Vérove, a married father of two, successfully hid in plain sight.
This has also raised uncomfortable questions for the police who took a long time to catch him, despite having a good description of the criminal and strong suspicions that he was one of them.
Vérove, 59, left a note for his wife before taking his own life in which he described carrying intense anger that turned him into a criminal.
He added: 'There were times when I couldn’t stand it and I had to harm, soil, kill someone innocent.'
DNA evidence confirmed that he was responsible for the murder of 11-year-old Cécile Bloch, who was found dead in Paris in 1986.
His victims also included Gilles Politi, a 38-year-old aviation technician, and 20-year-old German au pair Irmgard Müller, who were killed in the French capital in 1987.
The predator is also known to have raped at least two other children in the course of 31 suspected attacks until 1994.
During the investigation the killer was nicknamed Le Grêlé (The Pockmarked Man) after witnesses described his pimple-marked face.
Vérove’s widow, who has not been named, told Patricia Tourancheau, author of a book on Le Grêlé, ‘The Pockmarked Man: The Killer Was a Cop’, she had never suspected her husband’s double life.
Tourancheau writes that his appearance on the show was a ‘form of provocation’.
‘It’s unbelievable?’ she adds. ‘Why? Because we know that he is a serial killer and there he looks like an ordinary person.
‘It’s stupefying to see him take part in the game and defy everyone in a sort of way.
‘But at the same time that confirms that big criminals look like ordinary people.
‘They don’t have monsters’ heads.’
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