Luc Tangorre

Luc Tangorre (born 1959), known as the Marseille Southern Districts Rapist, is a French serial rapist whose crimes were highly publicized in France. He has been sentenced twice, the first time in 1983, to 15 years imprisonment for nine sexual assaults and rapes committed in Marseille.

He was partially pardoned for these acts by the then-president, François Mitterrand, in 1987. Five years later, Tangorre was convicted of raping two American students and resentenced to 18 years imprisonment. In 2019, he was sentenced to an additional to three and a half years for sexually assaulting three minors.

First case

Rape in Marseille On April 1, 1981, a 31-year-old woman named Sylviane was going home at 2 PM in the 8th arrondissement. She closed her car, took a few steps towards her home and then noticed a strange man, who immediately threatened her with a weapon and forced her to go back into the vehicle with him. Under the threat of what turns out to be a fake revolver, Sylviane entered the car and drove around the streets of Marseille with her kidnapper, stopping on a path upon request of the latter. There, the man raped her and then forced her to bring him back to the residence where, it seemed, his moped was.

Sylviane returned home and on the next day, she filed a complaint to the police station in Marseille for rape. She made a facial composite of her rapist (20–25 years old, wore white sneakers and a dark jacket), learning that she, in fact, had not been the only one to do so: between late 1979 and April 1981, nine other young women had reported being sexually assaulted in the 8th and 9th arrondissements. That same evening, another rape took place in Marseille, then another one just a week later.

Arrest of Luc Tangorre On April 12, a patrol of Marseille peacekeepers intercepted a man matching the composite sketch drawn by Sylviane, coupled with the fact that he behaved suspiciously. They called him for an identity check: his name was Luc Tangorre, he was 22 years old, a sports student, had a Citroën 2CV, and claimed that he was waiting for a friend to come. The police searched him, and found a wrapped knife on him. He was taken to the police station for interrogation, where he spent the next night and day. Sylviane came down to the police station so she could identify him, she believed to have recognized a man on the photo montage. A dozen days later, she was presented a bunch of suspects while behind a beam splitter, Sylviane said this about Luc Tangorre: "The individual fits perfectly, I recognize him so".

The other assaulted women also come the station, and some of them formally recognized Tangorre, while others either hesitated or weren't sure. Tangorre denied everything, pointing out that he was the only aged 20 to 25, wore white tennis shoes and shorter than 1,70 cm. For him, he was framed by the police.

The police searched his home the next day, and found a dummy revolver containing some dried mud, a moped and a khaki raincoat, crowned with suspicious spots. Those spots were examined, which later proved to be petroleum jelly. which also had the face of a mustachioed man at the bottom of the cover page.

The gendarmes again became interested in Luc Tangorre, learning that he lived in Lyon, where he ran a tobacco shop on the Place Carnot, on Marigny, bought after his release with the help of his parents. Their investigation determined that he had a green Renault 4L. On letters of rogatory, Christian Lernould, investigating judge at the court of Nîmes, ordered the gendarmes to bring in Tangorre for questioning on October 24.

Following the verdict, Vidal-Naquet apologized in a column published in Le Monde, recognizing that without the intervention of the support committee, Tangorre would not have been pardoned and the rapes of the two Americans would've never occurred.

This time, Tangorre was not released on parole. He only got two permissions granted within four months, before his release on September 1, 2000.

New offences Domiciled in the Lyon area, since his release from prison in 2000, Luc Tangorre became the talk of the town again on August 12, 2014, when he was indicted in Grau-du-Roi, on suspicion of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. The case experienced ramifications, as two other minors joined in the indictment, bringing the total number to three assaults in Gard. Luc Tangorre was left free, with a travel ban on Gard, although the Nîmes Procurate required that he be placed in provisional custody.

In December 2017, Tangorre was indicted again, this time for corrupting a minor in Saint-Martin-en-Haut, in Rhône. He was placed, eight months later, under judicial control.

On September 12, 2019, the Nîmes Correctional Tribunal sentenced Luc Tangorre to three and a half years for sexually assaulting three minors between July 1, 2012 and July 19, 2019. His civil and civic rights were withdrawn for a period of five years, and after he was convicted of rape six times, he continues to proclaim himself a victim of a miscarriage of justice.