French ex cop’s DNA reveals he is serial killer and child rapist after suicide note confession ends 35 year hunt
DNA tests have revealed an ex-French cop is a serial killer and child rapist, ending a 35 year hunt for the monster.
Francois Verove, 59, took his own life after investigators said they wanted to question him over a series of murders and rapes.
Depraved Verove left a suicide note confessing to the crimes and DNA has now confirmed he is the serial killer nicknamed ‘Le Grele’ - ‘the pockmarked man’.
He had been wanted by police since the 1980s for the murder and rape of young girls, but was never caught.
Verove has been linked to crimes in 1980s and 90s including rape of minors, murder, attempted murder, armed robbery and kidnapping of minors, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.
In the most notorious case, he was suspected of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl named Cecile who was found dead in the basement of the Paris building where she lived.
Police believe he grabbed her as she came out of the building's lift on her way to school and dragged her into the basement.
Her parents died without knowing who killed their daughter and family lawyer Didier Seban said it was "painful to know that the criminal took his secrets with him".
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According to the Parisien newspaper, Verove is also the suspect in another murder near Paris, of 19-year-old Karine Leroy, in 1994 in the city of Meaux.
He is also thought to have strangled a couple to death in the central Marais district of the capital in 1987.
In three separate attacks he had identified himself as a policeman.
Over the years investigators came to believe that the suspect may have been part of the gendarmerie – police who are in charge of internal security - and established a DNA profile of him.
In 1986, police had published a police sketch based on witness statements that showed a man of around 25 years old, six feet tall with light-brown hair, and with visible traces of acne on his face.
In recent months, an investigating magistrate had begun questioning around 750 gendarmes who had been deployed in the Paris region at the time.
One of them was Verove who was sent a summons on September 24 for questioning on September 29.
But he was then was 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, the Paris prosecutor said.
He was a former gendarme, who later became a police officer and then retired, she confirmed.
Verove is reported to have been a gendarme between 1983 and 1988 when he was a member of the Garde Républicaine, which guards the French President.
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Verove had reportedly been living quietly in a residential neighbourhood in Grau-du-Roi for years.
According to local media, Verove mentioned "past impulses" in a letter he left behind, which he had since brought "under control", and said he had committed no crimes after 1997.
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