Patrice Alègre

Patrice Alègre (born 20 June 1968) is a French serial killer and serial rapist. In 2002, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of five and the rape of six women that took place between 1989 and 1997.

In the aftermath of Alègre's capture, the police reopened several unsolved murder cases with possible links to him. During the ensuing investigation, Alègre, and several members of the red light community, claimed to have been part of a sex trafficking ring involving prominent members of society. The incident has been referred to in the French media as the Alègre case .

Early life

Patrice Alègre was born in Toulouse to a police officer and a teenage hairdresser. His father was described as violent and his mother often cheated on her husband, sometimes in front of Alègre. Alègre grew up in Saint-Geniès-Bellevue and was expelled from three secondary schools before he settled on the field of general mechanics. He lived with his grandmother for 14 years in the Izards district of Toulouse. While he lived with her, he dropped out of school after the fourth grade and turned to delinquency, theft, and drug trafficking. He eventually became homeless at the age of 13. He would later tell his psychiatrists that he had been sexually abused. Alègre committed his first sexual assault at age 16. In early 1988, Alègre met Cécile Chambert, with whom he had a daughter the next year.

Crimes

Despite the relative stability of his relationship, Alègre gradually became more immersed in criminal activity. Alègre found his victims in the station's district while he was employed as a barman in the police station cafeteria and then at the Gare de Toulouse-Matabiau's buffet restaurant. When women rejected his advances, he would rape and strangle them. He killed his first victim, Valérie Tariote, a co-worker, on 21 February 1989. On 16 February 1995, after a dispute where Alègre turned violent, Chambert ended her relationship with him and moved away with their daughter. Alègre moved in with his mistress, the manager of a nightclub where he was hired as a bouncer. He was fired from the nightclub after starting fights that scared away customers.

In February 1997, a 21-year-old Emillie Espès managed to flee after being raped by Alègre. Espès, who was the only surviving victim of Alègre, committed suicide in 2006. In June of the same year, Alègre met Mireille Normand, a 35-year-old woman living alone in a chalet in Verdun. Calling himself Franck, he offered his services as a handyman in exchange for lodging. On 19 June, he raped and strangled her. Her body was found buried in her garden three weeks later. Alègre vacationed in Spain, Germany, and Belgium, before returning to Paris where he lodged with Isabelle Chicherie, an SNCF employee. He raped and strangled her, and burned her body on 4 September 1997.

Alègre became a suspect in the murders when some of Chicherie's jewelry was found in his possession. The gendarmes wiretapped the phones of Alègre's relatives and convinced one of his friends to cooperate with the investigators. The friend then asked Alègre to meet him at a drop-off point in Châtenay-Malabry, where the police arrested him on 5 September 1997.

Alleged links to a sex trafficking network Background and police findings In 1999, Alègre alluded to investigators that he had been present during the unsolved murder of the 28-year-old French-Canadian prostitute Line Galbardi. In June 2000 a special investigative unit, Homicide 31, was established to look into cold murder cases that Alègre may have been responsible for. Homicide 31 discovered patterns typical for Alègre's modus operandi in the murder of Josette Poiroux, who was stabbed to death and burned at her studio in Toulouse in 1992. Another murder that showed similarity to Alègre's crimes was that of Josette Legoy, a prostitute strangled in her apartment on 4 December 1987. Alègre would be indicted for both murders in May 2002. Furthermore, he was accused of murdering Line Galbardi and Patricia Ballejos in 1992, as well as raping a prostitute in 1997.

Khelifi claimed to have been forced into prostitution by Alègre at age 17, at a time when Alègre was working in the police station canteen. Bourragué had initially denied any links to Alègre, even though he had acted as deputy prosecutor in the case of Edith Schleichardt in 1990, in whose death Alègre was a suspect.

On 18 May, Dominique Baudis stated that an ex-prostitute had accused him of being an accomplice of Alègre. He denied the claims and said that they were false accusations brought forward by "the pornography lobby", which had engaged in a smear campaign against him after he had recommended a ban on pornographic films on television.

André Mayrac, the owner of several libertine clubs, requested to be heard by the courts, saying that he possessed photos of the infamous "dungeon" where the alleged crimes took place. However, the photos were found not to have a link to the case.

Sentences and dismissal of charges

On 21 February 2002, the Assize Court of Haute-Garonne sentenced Alègre to life imprisonment for the five murders he committed between 1989 and 1997, with a probation period of twenty-two-years.

On 27 May 2003, Puis was indicted for making false accusations and sentenced to prison. While incarcerated, he retracted the statements he had made and attempted suicide. However, he later insisted that everything he initially told investigators was true. On 20 September 2003, Puis was found dead in a psychiatric clinic in Toulouse. His death was ruled a suicide by drug overdose. Khelifi also retracted her previous statement of having been sexually assaulted by the police. She did, however, maintain that Baudis was a perpetrator in the crimes. Khelifi was examined by psychiatrist Daniel Ajzenberg, who stated that her statements were "credible on a psychiatric level".

Roche children claims The Alègre affair resurfaced in 2005 when Charles Louis-Roche and Diane Roche, children of Pierre Roche, who had been the president of the justice chamber at Nîmes Court of Appeal during the Alègre affair, claimed that their father had been murdered by a sex trafficking network in which he had implicated himself. Both of them were charged with "aggravated defamation and invasion of privacy". They then went on to create a website to denounce Pierre Roche, as a "corrupt man, unworthy, violent and perverse husband and father", "sickening orgy participant, consumer to the chain of prostitutes of all kinds, who had made their lives a daily hell." Charles and Diane claimed that their father confided to them that he had taken part in the evenings at which ritual sacrifices and tortures took place. They claimed that he had gathered incriminating evidence on people within the network. Charles and Diane claim that later he completely lost his mind and burned tons of documents that were in his possession. He admitted to five murders, one attempted murder, and six rapes, but was also indicted for four other murders. 21 February 2002: Alègre is sentenced to life imprisonment with a twenty-year lock-in period. Psychiatrists, Michel Dubec and Daniel Zagury, evoked the hypothesis of "displaced matricide" to explain Alègre's murders, whom they described as "an organized serial killer", "a psychopath", "a malignant narcissist" having undergone disorganization traumas related to "maternal sexual abuse". June 2002, gendarme unit Homicide 31 is established on prosecutor's request to carry out an investigation into other possible victims of Alègre. One such case, concerning the 1992 Toulouse murder of the prostitute Line Galbardi, led them to two former Toulouse prostitutes who were familiar with Galbardi: Christèle 'Patricia' Bourre and Florence 'Fanny' Khelifi. 1 April 2003, the newspaper La Dépêche du Midi launched a press campaign, released statements from the two women, and put pressure on the justice department to disclose more information. Paris newspapers followed suit and the rumour swelled, fed mainly by two local journalists. 15 April 2003, the Toulouse prosecutor opened a judicial investigation against Alègre and others accused of committing gang rapes and aggravated rapes. The investigation looked into acts of torture and barbarism, committed by people abusing the authority that conferred their function, following the statements of former prostitutes Khelifi and Bourre. 12 May 2003, the weekly Marianne presented the result of their investigations, in particular recent "revelations" made by one of the prostitutes. It involved police officers and a gendarme from Toulouse who "were aware of their actions and the corruption but also organized parties in the presence of at least two Toulouse lawyers and other notables..", with the name of the Toulouse mayor even being quoted. 18 May 2003, the former mayor of Toulouse, Dominique Baudis denounced the TF1 TV channel for quoting his name in the investigation and claimed it was a "frightening machination" related to the "pornographic industry". 19 May 2003, Baudis charged his lawyer with defamation. 22 May 2003, two prostitutes confirmed their remarks before the judges and Pierre-Olivier Puis, under the pseudonym "Djamel", said that there have been "dead". 27 May 2003, Jean Volff, Attorney General of Toulouse, announced that his name was also cited in the case. He was replaced the following day. A new judicial investigation was opened against Puis, Khelifi, and Bourre for alleged crimes and imaginary misdemeanours, false testimonies, and complicity. Puis was placed in custody, with Baudis, Volff and Marc Bourragué becoming civil parties in the case. 13 June 2003, Baudis accused the head of La Dépêche du Midi, Jean-Michel Baylet, of plotting against him. 30 June 2003, on the day of his installation in the highest court of appeal, Volff protested in Le Figaro against the way he was treated by Dominique Perben, Minister of Justice and media. 17 September 2003, Khelifi retracted her rape charges against Baudis. 20 September 2003, Puis was found dead at a Toulouse psychiatric clinic. 11 July 2005, the investigating chamber of the Court of Appeals of Toulouse discussed the component of "rapes and organized pimping gangs" in which Baudis and others were implicated in. December 2005, 32-year-old Khelifi was indicted for slanderous denunciation against Baudis and Bourragué. September 2006, Bourre was indicted for slanderous denunciation against Baudis. 2006, Emilia Espès, the only survivor of Alègre's attacks, committed suicide. 28 March 2008, the prosecution announced that the ex-prostitutes would be tried in correctional for "slanderous denunciation" towards Baudis and Volff. After returning to their initial statements they were found guilty and respectively sentenced to two and three years in prison, which were suspended by the Toulouse Criminal Court on 26 March 2009. 3 July 2008, the investigating judges of Toulouse district, Serge Lemoine and Fabrice Rives made an order of dismissal concerning three homicides and rape with a weapon connected with Alègre. September 2019, after having served his minimum 22-year term in prison, Alègre applied for parole.

Deaths related to the case + Name of the witness Connection to the case Time of death Cause of death Pierre Roche

Suspected victims 23 September 1990, 23-year-old Edith Schleichardt, was found dead with a jacket pulled up to her chest. Underwear and tights were found removed, and a tear gas canister trapped between the thighs. Ruled a suicide by drug overdose.