Chilling moment as brutal serial killer who raped victims from age 11 appears on TV quiz amid 30-year manhunt
THIS is the chilling moment a French serial killer who raped victims as young as 11 appeared on a national TV program as he was hunted by police.
François Verove, a retiree Police himself an officer, took part in Tout le monde veut prendre sa place in 2019 after having been on the run for 30 years.
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A relaxed Vérove looked at ease as he chatted with popular French TV presenter Nagui Fam during the quiz show.
Footage shows the shameless butcher standing tall, showing no signs of fear, as the presenter introduced him as “François of La Grande-Motte”.
During some light-hearted banter, Vérove talked about his police life – explaining how he was a cop before joining the mounted police and then the motorcycle brigade in the 1980s.
He also revealed how he was briefly suspended over an incident involving a prostitute, but was soon allowed to rejoin the force by senior officers.
During the quiz round, Vérove failed to correctly answer two general knowledge questions about the Olympic Games and tuberculosis vaccinations and was therefore removed from the game.
The chilling footage from the 2019 show was revealed by Marianne, a news magazine that later revealed Vérove’s true identity.
His appearance on French national television is seen as an indication that the serial killer, who had been on the hunt for 30 years at the time, made no attempt to conceal his identity.
Over the years, investigators came to believe that the suspect may have been part of the gendarmerie – the police force responsible for internal security – and set up a police station. DNA profile of him.
Victims who survived their encounter with him reported that he showed his officer badge, identifying himself as a police officer.
In 1986, police published a police sketch based on witness statements showing a man about 25 years old, 6 feet tall, with light brown hair and visible traces of acne on his face.
However, Vérove’s sinister past only recently came to light after he committed suicide in 2021after which a police investigation linked him to 31 rapes and murders he had committed Paris in the 80s and 90s.
Vérove, then 59, left a suicide note in the flat where he overdosed on drugs, telling his wife that he had “carried a mad rage that turned me into a criminal”.
The note read: “There were times when I couldn’t take it and I had to destroy, defile and kill an innocent person.”
Vérove also mentioned “past impulses” in the letter – admitting murders without detailing the victims or circumstances.
He wrote that he stopped committing these crimes in 1997.
A DNA sample from Vérove confirmed that he was the killer police had been searching for since Cécile Bloch was dead in Paris in 1986.
Considered his most infamous case, he was suspected of raping and murdering the 11-year-old girl who was found dead in the basement of the building where she lived.
Police suspect he grabbed her as she came out of the building’s elevator on her way to school and dragged her to the basement.
Chronology of Crimes by François Vérove
1986 – On April 7, Vérove met an eight-year-old girl in the elevator while she was on her way to school.
He forcibly dragged the girl to a basement of her apartment building, raped her and tried to strangle her with a cord.
Presumably believing he had killed her, Vérove fled the scene.
1986 – On May 5, Cécile Bloch, 11, was on the way to school when she met Vèrove in the elevator.
She was raped and murdered by Vérove, who later dumped her body in a cellar.
1987 – In April 1987, Vèrove murdered Gilles Politi, a 38-year-old air technician, and Irmgard Müller, a German au pair employed by Politi’s family, in an apartment in Paris.
Their bodies were discovered together in the apartment: Politi had been stripped naked and forced to lie face down, with his arms and legs tied in a sling.
Müller had been hung by her arms from the upright frame of a bunk bed, her throat had been slit with a knife. Both victims had suffered physical torture via cigarette burns before their deaths.
1987 – On October 27, a fourteen-year-old girl returning home from school was stopped by Vérove, who identified himself as a police officer and claimed that he had to question her for an investigation.
Vérove soon dragged his victim into an apartment before handcuffing her and raping her.
He left her alive after breaking into the apartment.
1994 – On June 29, an eleven-year-old girl, identified as Ingrid, was approached by Vérove who kidnapped her.
She was driven over an hour to an abandoned farm in Essonne, where she was raped for hours.
Vérove fled the scene without killing Ingrid.
Her parents died without knowing who killed their daughter. Family lawyer Didier Seban said it was “painful to know that the criminal took his secrets with him”.
His other victims included Gilles Politi, a 38-year-old aviation technician, and Irmgard Müller, a German au pair, 20, both of whom were murdered in Paris in 1987.
Vérove is also the suspect in another murder near Paris, of 19-year-old Karine Leroy, in 1994, and is alleged to have strangled a couple in 1987.
The killer is known to have raped at least two other children and is suspected of committing a total of 31 murders and rapes until 1994.
In 2021, an investigation into the killings was reopened and around 750 gendarmes, who were deployed in the Paris region at the time of the crimes, were summoned for questioning.
One of them was Vérove, who received a summons on September 24 for questioning on September 29.
But he was subsequently reported missing by his wife on September 27 and found dead two days later in Grau-du-Roi, a seaside resort on the Mediterranean coast.
On the day of his suicide, Vérove cooked lunch, took an afternoon nap as usual, and engaged in daily conversation before saying he was going for a bike ride.
It is said that he committed suicide out of fear of his arrest.
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