Alfredo Stranieri

Last updated
Alfredo Stranieri
Born (1956-07-30) 30 July 1956 (age 67)
Italy
Other names"The Classified Ad Killer"
"The Cuckoo"
Conviction(s) Murder
Criminal penalty Life imprisonment
Details
Victims4
Span of crimes
1997–1999
Country France
Date apprehended
7 July 1999

Alfredo Stranieri (born 30 July 1956 in Italy, naturalized in 1982), known as the "Classified Ads Killer", is an Italian-born French criminal and serial killer, who met his victims through classified ads in which he presented himself as a potential buyer of properties or used cars.

Contents

He would kill his victims and appropriate their property. He was sentenced to life imprisonment together with a minimum sentence of 22 years on 28 February 2003 for four murders and one unsuccessful attempted murder. Stranieri had appropriated the property of the two couples he had murdered to use it in fraudulent activities, also trying to kill a man who wanted to sell him a car.

Crimes

First double murder

Near the end of 1997, Stranieri responded to an ad published by a couple of restaurateurs, Frédéric Adman and his companion Nathalie Girard, who wanted to sell a nightclub in Viry-Châtillon called the New Love. On 7 November 1997 the sale was signed, and six days later, the couple disappeared. [1]

Attempted murder

On 4 January 1999 Stranieri, under the pseudonym of his first murder victim Frédéric Adman, contacted Simon Cohen through an advertisement for his car. Curiously, without seeing the vehicle or negotiating about its price, Stranieri offered Cohen to finalize the transaction in his restaurant/nightclub New Lover in Viry-Châtillon. When Cohen arrived, Stranieri told him that a friend would come and bring him the check certified by the bank to pay for the car. He then coaxed his victim by offering to visit the premises while waiting for the check, to which Cohen reluctantly agreed. [2]

Stranieri then pulled out a .22 LR Carbine and, in the dim light, fired 5 times at Cohen, but the man managed to escape to the neighbor's house by climbing the fence. The neighbor then called the police, while Stranieri fled. Simon Cohen was transported to the emergency room, where after 4 hours of surgery he managed to survive.

The police opened an investigation into the nightclub's owner and discovered that Alfredo Stranieri already had a criminal record for scams and car trafficking. They then went to his home in Soisy-sur-Seine, where his wife Anne-Marie expected that her husband would arrive early, but never did, and the police lost his trail. [3]

The Cohen case, told in just a few lines in a local newspaper, drew the attention of the Girard couple, whose daughter Nathaliem and her companion Frédéric Adman had disappeared suddenly on 10 November 1997. They were running a restaurant called Oasis in Viry-Châtillon, which had since become New Love. [4]

Second double murder

In March 1999, in Aveyron, he selected a classified ad for an inn in Naussac called La Bouriatte. The place was to his taste: luxurious and isolated, and the bill was signed on 10 April 1999. Two days later, Nicole Rousseau and Claude Mouly, the two owners who were in the process of a divorce, disappeared. Alfredo, who introduced himself under the name of Mario Stranieri (thanks to the identity card of his brother, which he had borrowed) and claimed to be the manager of a large nightclub in the Paris area, accepted the purchase for 4 million francs without negotiating and moved to Bouriatte, while Rousseau and Mouly mysteriously disappeared.

Arrest and incarceration

Corinne Mouly, worried about not hearing from her father, moved in front of the hostel to spy on Stranieri and alerted the gendarmes. The investigators, under the direction of the commander of the gendarmes in Aveyron, Colonel Gery Plane, then discovered that Stranieri was wanted for the attempted murder of Simon Cohen. "Mario" Stranieri was arrested on 7 July 1999 by the gendarmes in Capdenac. [2] The case was entrusted to the Évry research brigade and teams were deployed to search for the bodies of the deceased in Naussac. On 19 July 1999 the police exhumed the bodies of Girard and Adman in the garden of the New Love nightclub and on the next day, the gendarmes exhumed those of Rousseau and Mouly near La Bouriatte. [5]

Suspected of being an accomplice in his scams, Stranieri's wife Anne-Marie was incarcerated in December 1999. [6]

List of victims

Date of attackDate of discoveryIdentityAgePlace
13 November 199719 July 1999Frédéric Adman53 / 56 Viry-Châtillon
Nathalie Girard30
4 January 19994 January 1999Simon Cohen31Viry-Châtillon
12 April 199920 July 1999Claude Mouly60 / 61 Naussac
Nicole Rousseau55

Trial and sentence

Alfredo Stranieri's trial began in the assize court of Essonne on 18 February 2003. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on 28 February 2003, with a 22-year security sentence. The conviction was confirmed in March 2004 by the Créteil Court of Appeals. Stranieri's appeal in 2005 was rejected by the court. [7]

Life in prison

Alfredo Stranieri and Germain Gaiffe both appeared before the 6th Criminal Chamber in Versailles on 11 March 2011 for "disrespect". For months, Stranieri claimed to be the father of the daughter of the former Minister of Justice, Rachida Dati. [8]

This case dates back to September 2010. Stranieri, sentenced to life imprisonment for killing and burying four people in gardens, and Germain Gaiffe, sentenced to 30 years imprisonment for killing and dismembering a man, both posted an identical letter from the Poissy prison, addressed to the hall of the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Both claimed to the father of Rachida Dati's daughter and enclosed a declaration of paternity. Warned by the prison services, the public prosecutor's office decided to seize the case and prosecute them for "insulting the person in charge of public authority". Dati soon became a civil party. At a hearing, Gaiffe wore a provocative sweater on which "I am the father of Zohra" was written. When questioned, the two men explained that they had shared a moment of intimacy in a room with the minister who came to visit their prison in December 2007, more than a year before she gave birth.

On 17 July 2013 Stranieri married Gaiffe. The wedding, delivered by Frédérik Bernard, mayor of Poissy, took place in the presence of their respective witnesses, the terrorist Carlos the Jackal and the comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala at the Central House of Poissy in Yvelines. [9] Dieudonné had met the two criminals in the prison workshop while writing sketches. Libération commented that it is "unlikely that is a marriage of love", and saw it rather as a "new provocation of the comedian, organized with some comrades". [10]

Bibliography

TV documentaries

Radio broadcasts

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Quentin State Prison</span> California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men

San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Sobhraj</span> Indian-Vietnamese Serial killer with French citizenship (born 1944)

Charles Sobhraj is a serial killer, fraudster, and thief who preyed on Western tourists travelling on the hippie trail of South Asia during the 1970s. He was known as the Bikini Killer because of the attire of several of his victims, as well as the Splitting Killer and the Serpent for "his snake-like ability to avoid detection by authorities".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clinton Correctional Facility</span> Maximum-security state prison for men in New York, US

Clinton Correctional Facility is a New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision maximum security state prison for men located in the Village of Dannemora, New York. The prison is sometimes colloquially referred to as Dannemora, although its name is derived from its location in Clinton County, New York. The southern perimeter wall of the prison borders New York State Route 374. Church of St. Dismas, the Good Thief, a church built by inmates, is located within the walls. The prison is sometimes referred to as New York's Little Siberia, due to the cold winters in Dannemora and the isolation of the upstate area. It is the largest maximum-security prison and the third-oldest prison in New York. The staff includes about 1,000 officers and supervisors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luis Garavito</span> Colombian serial killer and sex offender (1957–2023)

Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos, also known as La Bestia or Tribilín ("Goofy"), was a Colombian serial killer, sex offender, pedophile, and necrophile. In October 1999, he confessed to committing the rape, torture, mutilation, and murder of 147 minors, predominantly young men and boys in western Colombia.

In England and Wales, life imprisonment is a sentence that lasts until the death of the prisoner, although in most cases the prisoner will be eligible for early release after a minimum term set by the judge. In exceptional cases a judge may impose a "whole life order", meaning that the offender is never considered for parole, although they may still be released on compassionate grounds at the discretion of the Home Secretary. Whole life orders are usually imposed for aggravated murder, and can only be imposed where the offender was at least 21 years old at the time of the offence being committed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dieudonné M'bala M'bala</span> French comedian, actor and political activist (born 1966)

Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, generally known by his stage name Dieudo, is a French comedian, actor and far-right political activist. He has been convicted for hate speech, advocating terrorism, and slander in Belgium, France and Switzerland.

Francis Heaulme is a French serial killer dubbed the "Criminal Backpacker".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terry Blair (serial killer)</span> American serial killer

Terry Anthony Blair is an American serial killer who was convicted of killing seven women of various ages in Kansas City, Missouri, though investigators believe he may have additional unidentified victims.

A lonely hearts killer is a criminal who commits murder by contacting a victim who has either posted advertisements to or answered advertisements via newspaper classified ads and personal or lonely hearts ads.

The Albert Foulcher case is a French criminal case in which insurer Albert Foulcher was accused of murdering André Meffray, a former insurer who was shot five times by a Dan Wesson firearm in 1993. In this case, Foulcher, who was the prime suspect, denied the facts during his custody and detention on remand. Being free before his trial, he did not appear and ran away. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia. It was during his trip that he distinguished himself on 8 January 2001 near Narbonne, where he killed four people in the same day. First was Pascal Herrero, the husband of a former mistress. Then there were two policemen and finally Maurice Michaud, the insurer he thought was in cahoots with Meffray. Until 17 January, during his run, he became public enemy number 1. At that date, he hid in the apartment of his mistress Isabelle Susic in the district of Grangette in Béziers. But cornered by the police and RAID, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The police eventually found his body in the early morning after entering the apartment. Foulcher is still legally considered innocent because of his death which has extinguished the public action.

Joseph-Thomas "Tommy" Recco (born 1934), nicknamed "Geronimo", is a French serial killer. He was sentenced to criminal imprisonment in 1962 for murdering his godfather two years earlier. Released in 1977, he killed three cashiers in Béziers in December 1979 and three other people, including an 11-year-old, in Carqueiranne in January 1980. He was sentenced in 1983 to life imprisonment without parole for these two triple murders. An inmate since 1980, Tommy Recco is one of the oldest detainees in France.

Louis Poirson, nicknamed "Rambo", is a French rapist and serial killer.

Vincenzo Aiutino is a French serial killer popularly known as "the man with fifty affairs". Convicted of three murders in the Longwy commune, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on March 6, 1998, along with 18 years of preventive detention without parole.

Pierre Fernand Bodein is a French criminal and spree killer who, since 1969, has alternated stays between psychiatric hospitals and prisons. Nicknamed "Pierrot le fou" meaning "Pierre the fool", his criminal record includes seven convictions, three of which are murders, including violent rapes. He is the 11th child of a family of 16 children, descending from a Yenish community.

Marcel Henri Barbeault is a French serial killer who murdered eight people in Nogent-sur-Oise in the 1970s. He is responsible for the murder of seven women and one man. Because his crimes were always in the evening or early in the morning, he was given the nickname The Shadow Killer.

Patrice Alègre (born 20 June 1968) is a French serial killer who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002 with a minimum term of 22 years for five murders, an attempted murder, and six rapes. He, subsequently, was acquitted of four additional murder charges on 3 July 2008.

Christian Van Geloven was a Dutch kidnapper, rapist and double murderer, responsible for the murders of two young French girls on October 19, 1991, in Elne, Pyrénées-Orientales. For his crimes, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with 30 years of preventive detention on March 25, 1994, for the two killings, which he served until his cancer-related death in prison.

Mária Gerzsány was a Hungarian serial killer responsible for poisoning at least three people with arsenic in Kistelek between 1905 and 1911. She was sentenced to life imprisonment for these murders, but it's presumed that she might've been responsible for more, selling her poisons to people who wished to get rid of unwanted relatives.

David Lefèvre, known as The Swamp Killer, is a French serial killer.

References

  1. ↑ Jacques Pradel, « Alfredo Stranieri, le tueur aux petites annonces », émission L'heure du crime sur RTL, 16 janvier 2013[ circular reference ]
  2. 1 2 Pascal Michel (2009). 40 years of Criminal Affairs..
  3. ↑ L'affaire Alfredo Stranieri 17 octobre 2007
  4. ↑ Olivier Bertrand (21 July 1999). "Four corpses with proof of purchase. These are the former owners of the shops bought by Stranieri". liberation.fr.
  5. ↑ Marc Dejean (17 February 2003). "Alfredo Stranieri, is he a serial killer?". La Dépêche du Midi.
  6. ↑ "Is she an accomplice of Alfredo? Anne-Marie Stranieri has just been incarcerated". ladepeche.fr. 24 December 1999.
  7. ↑ "Back on the criminal case: Alfredo Stranieri, "the Cuckoo"". 20 minutes. 26 July 2010. Archived from the original on 21 April 2014. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
  8. ↑ "The two murderers who dreamed of being Dati's lover will be judged". 20 minutes. 11 March 2011.
  9. ↑ "Dieudonné and the terrorist Carlos witness the marriage of two detainees, 20 Minutes, 17 July 2013.
  10. ↑ "In prison, gay marriage mocked". Libération. 17 July 2013.[ permanent dead link ]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.