Nadir Sedrati

Nadir Sedrati (born 26 March 1938), known as The Canal Cutter , is a French serial killer who was convicted of killing and dismembering three people from May to July 1999, whose remains he would later dump in the Marne–Rhine Canal near Nancy. He is also suspected in at least two disappearances dating back to 1982, for which he was never charged.

Early life Nadir Sedrati was born on 26 March 1938 in the village of Gavet in Isère, the younger of two boys born to Algerian immigrants. His father died when he was three, and due to the ongoing World War and her mother's incapability to take care of them, the two brothers were placed in an orphanage. Shortly afterwards, Sedrati's older brother, Milhoud, was expelled due to being overtly violent, but Nadir was allowed to stay due to his more calm and intelligent nature.

On 2 October 1946, at the age of 8 and a half, Sedrati was baptized at the church in Douvaine. As he was frequently called 'Dominique' instead of his given name, he grew up with the impression that that was his real name until 1952, when he checked his identity papers and learned his true name.

First packages and internments As a teenager in the 1950s, Sedrati was involved in a string of petty thefts, for which he was not convicted.

In 1957, at the age of 19, Sedrati joined the army. Performing his military service during the Algerian War, he is quickly shaken by fighting against the Algerian military, whom he describes as his “brothers”, and decides to set up a swindle. Sedrati was eventually unmasked and discharged from the army. His superiors deemed him “capable of the worst”. Sedrati was subsequently committed to the psychiatric hospital in Nice for a nervous breakdown.

In 1969, Sedrati struck up a relationship with a woman of Algerian origin. Wishing to marry her, he decided to accompany her to Algeria to meet her parents-in-law. Sedrati's future in-laws, however, reject this “presumed Algerian, named Dominique, uncircumsized and not speaking a word of Arabic”. Sedrati couldn't stand the prejudice of his future in-laws, who claimed he wasn't from Algeria, and decided to end the relationship. At one point, however, Gachy vanished without a trace, but strangely, Sedrati did not report his disappearance to authorities and instead started using his friend's identity papers and checkbook, as well as living at his residences in La Verrière and Saintes. As he was an adult with few friends other than Sedrati, no investigation took place to investigate the man's disappearance.

In the summer of 1982, an employee of a shop in La Rochelle noticed that Sedrati was fraudulently buying products using a fake identity and reported him to the police. After his arrest, investigators learned that the scamming techniques he had used were similar to the ones he had used in the past, and suspected that Gachy might have fallen victim to a homicide. In August of that year, in spite of his protests of innocence and the fact that Gachy's body had not been found, Sedrati was charged with murder and identity theft. He then spent the next three years and three months in prison, awaiting trial at the cour d'assises in Nancy.

On 25 November 1985, Sedrati's trial began before the Charente-Maritime Assize Court, for the alleged murder of Gachy. During the two-day trial, Sedrati still claimed to have impersonated Gachy, but denied having killed the pensioner, claiming that he was a “simple swindler”. In fact, one of the stumbling blocks in the case against Sedrati is the absence of the missing man's body. Sedrati's arguments work in his favor, given his history of fraud. On second day, the trial began. The public prosecutor demanded a life sentence for the accused, but as there was little evidence to convict him, Sedrati was instead acquitted of all charges and released.

Léon Krauss In October 1994, 62-year-old Léon Krauss, a pensioner living by himself at an apartment in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, mysteriously vanished. His disappearance went unnoticed at first and allowed Sedrati to settle into his apartment and use his identity papers and bank accounts. Soon after, the building's janitor received a letter, supposedly written by Krauss, in which he claimed to have rented his apartment to Sedrati.

On 24 December, Sedrati went to the police station in Strasbourg and, pretending to be Krauss, asked that they inform his "family" to stop pestering him before he abruptly left. Approximately four months later, Krauss' family members alerted the police, claiming that the man who claimed to be their relative was an impostor and that the letters' handwriting did not match.

Revelation On 7 July, the hand was identified as belonging to German national Hans Gassen, who had been released from the Saint-Mihiel Detention Centre the previous year. On July 19, search of both properties revealed that a certain Philippe Grossiord had regularly called Gassen, with them realizing that it was an alias used by convicted fraudster and a former cellmate of the murder victim - Nadir Sedrati.

Trial

First instance On 25 April 2002, Sedrati's trial began at the cour d'assises in Meurthe-et-Moselle. Throughout the proceedings, Sedrati continued to arrogantly proclaim that he was innocent of all charges, which was initially backed up by the fact that nothing incriminating was found on the shredder found in his kitchen.

Appeals trial On 19 May 2003, Sedrati's appeal trial began before the cour d'assises in Metz. During the course of the proceedings, a dramatic turn of events occurred when a female prisoner who knew Ronfort claimed to have seen the man alive in 2000, over a year after Sedrati was arrested. As her testimony seemed genuine and in good faith, the claim was taken into consideration as possible evidence that Ronfort was still alive.

When it came to the psychiatric reports, experts stated that Sedrati had a "perverse, almost cannibalistic" personality and that he was a manipulator who enjoyed toying with people to the extent of simulating insanity by eating his own excrement and drinking his own urine. Jurors eventually disregarded the young woman's testimony when they learned that Ronfort's blood had been found in Sedrati's apartment, and because of this, he was found guilty yet again, receiving a life term with 22 years preventative detention.

Following his second trial, Sedrati filed an appeal to the Court of Cassation, which rejected his appeal on 7 October 2004. Since then, he has remained in prison but has been eligible for parole since July 2021.

Advances in DNA The 1990s were a big step for genetics, as it led to the rise of DNA. During the investigation, DNA and recent software made it possible to identify Gassen with the help of the Paris Forensic Center, later leading to the location and identification of additional evidence relating to Steil and Ronfort. The lack of such technologies was a crucial reason why Sedrati avoided imprisonment for his likely involvement in the disappearances of Gachy and Krauss, and because of this, attorney François Robinet has stated that he firmly believes Sedrati to be responsible. He has also said that Sedrati might have killed others between 1985 and 1995, and possibly even before 1982.